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PORTRAIT OF BACON 

From- the First Edition of '' Sylva Sylvartiin 



Frontispiece 



IS IT SHAKESPEARE? 

THE GREAT QUESTION OF ELIZABETHAN 

LITERATURE. ANSWERED IN THE LIGHT 

OF NEW REVELATIONS AND IMPORTANT 

CONTEMPORARY EVIDENCE HITHERTO 

UNNOTICED 



BY A CAMBRIDGE GRADUATE 

" T/jey hwve their exits and their entrances " 



WITH FACSIMILES 



NEW YORK 
E. P. DUTTON ^ CO. 

1903 






Printed by 

Ballantyne, Hanson &* Co. 

Edinburgh 






TO . ALL . SERIOVS . STVDENTS. 

OF . ELIZABETHAN . LITERATVRE. 

SHAKESPEARIANS . OR . BACONIANS. 

CIPHERERS . DECIPHERERS. 

OR . REVIEWERS. 

THE . AVTHOR. 

WISHETH. 

HAPPINESSE . AND . VNITIE. 

VNDER. 

ONE . HEAD . ONE . MOTTO . AND. 

ONE . TRILITERAL . BANNER. 

THVS . SVBSCRIBING . HIMSELF. 

So, Reviewers, save my Bacon ; 
O let not Folly mar Delight : 
These my name and claim unriddle 
To all who set the Rubric right. 



PREFACE 

Who knows not how difficult it always is to get people to 
alter their preconceived ideas or their traditional beliefs ? 
But whenever sufficient evidence has been discovered in 
support of a change of current opinion, then it is, I think, 
just as well that some one should collect it and present it 
to the public, making, at the same time, such additions 
from his own researches as may help to settle the question. 
That is my excuse for this volume. If people were afraid 
to offer rebutting evidence because all the leading literary 
authorities had declared that there was no evidence 
against them that was not "irrational," we should make 
very slow progress in research. 

Look at theology ; how often have the big guns and 
canons of the Church declared that the evidence for the 
antipodes and the motion of the earth was " irrational." 
If no one had ventured to oppose this idea in the face of 
their tremendous authority, we might still all be holding 
the apparently very sensible opinion that the earth is 
fixed and flat. 

To me the question of the authorship of those im- 
mortal works which have so long borne on them the name 
of William Shakespeare is one of the most interesting we 
can discuss in literary criticism. I hold in addition, that 
the whole matter should be discussed without heat, 
without prejudice (though that is very hard), and without 



viii PREFACE 

vituperation. The last requisite ought to be very easy, 
for surely vituperation is no argument, neither is it any 
assistance to argument with right-judging people. But 
the orthodox Shakespearians have not as a rule fulfilled 
the last literary requisite, and I hope I shall not be 
reckoned uncourteous if now and then in the following 
pages I take occasion to notice it. 

For the literary services of Mr. Sidney Lee, who is 
the generalissimo of the orthodox party, I have the 
highest esteem and respect. His numerous articles in 
the " Dictionary of National Biography " are the models 
of what such notices should be; but when he writes 
in the Times or elsewhere on the Bacon-Shakespeare 
question he seems a different man, and has no ex- 
pressions too severe to use against " irrational '• 
Baconians. 

I have been obliged to point out the errors and in- 
consistencies of the chief Shakespearians whereby they 
often refute each other. Of course this is an accessory 
to my argument, and I have a right to avail myself of 
it, but I shall be indeed sorry if it can be shown that 
I have spoken discourteously of any one, for this reason, 
if for none other, that such a method defeats its own 
object. 

We must not forget, however, that this great literary 
question is still suh judice ; neither party is out of the 
wood yet, or out of court either. All the talents may 
yet prove to be only bhnd leaders of the blind, and the 
ditch they are to fall into may not be very far off. 

Remember the cognoscenti in the witchcraft delusions 
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and what a 
big ditch they are all buried in now. They were the " big 
battalions " with a vengeance, and only a stolid champion 



PREFACE ix 

here and there could be found to oppose them. Their 
arguments were irresistible, even as the Shakespearian 
arguments are irresistible — " Thou shalt not suffer a 
witch to live " (Exod. xxii. i8). If that was not a final 
and unimpeachable argument, where could there by any 
possibility be one ? The Word of God definitely states 
that witches exist, and are to be killed off-hand. 

So that question was settled. 

In our matter Ben Jonson, who knew Shakespeare as 
well as any man living, and knew Bacon equally well, 
declared in black and white again and again in the first 
collected edition of the Shakespeare-Plays that Shake- 
speare, the Swan of Avon, was the man who wrote them, 
and several other contemporary writers virtually said the 
same thing. If we have not here a final and convincing 
argument, where can one be found better ? So that 
question is settled, and the only question that no one 
seems able to settle is, " Why on earth do not the Baconians 
give up their folly ? " 

Now, what are we to say to such things ? Well, surely 
this much ; that in literary judgments, and in our judg- 
ment of other matters as well, the most cultivated and 
judicious men of the age may be both right and wrong. 
That is to say, they may be right according to the lights 
and knowledge of their age, and their judgment quite a 
sane one according to the evidence before them ; but — and 
there is everything in this but — there may be a great deal 
of evidence not before them ; many facts which cannot, 
at the time, be brought into court because they are then 
unknown ; facts which throw a totally different light on 
the testimony to be dealt with. 

Up till now I have been altogether an outsider, a non- 
combatant without the slightest wound or scratch that 



X PREFACE 

could fester or rankle, but herewith I join the ranks and 
the fight and shall look out for blows. 

Besides the ordinary weapons of this Forty Years' 
War I have accoutred myself with a few new and fancy 
weapons of my own, and this is my chief excuse for 
'listing for the fray. I want to prove my arms. My 
fear is, that being a raw recruit I may shoot, through 
want of discipline, some of my own side. 

My arguments and illustrations are mainly based on 
the Sonnets and the Poems as being fresher and, as I hope 
to show, more productive ground. 

This ground has been avoided by most Baconians, and 
triumphantly claimed as Shakespeare's by all the orthodox 
talent. However, I hope to show clearly that both Poems 
and Sonnets alike came from the marvellous brain of 
Francis Bacon. 

There is really no need for much preface. We must 
not stay too long in this vestibule, or some cryptograms 
may be discovered. I \\ill therefore onh^ say here what 
I have also repeated at the back door or finis of this 
book. I wish this work to be considered tentative, and 
not tlie creation of a predominant idea. I would give 
up my Rival Poets, my loose-legged Lais, my Dark Lady, 
together with dancing Mar}' Fitton, and all the Adonis- 
like young damsels in doublet, hose, and codpiece, who 
may have taken Bacon's curious fancy; — I would renounce 
them all, or any other false or irregular moves I may 
have made in this difficult game ; — na}- , I would suffer 
fools gladly, and take a checkmate from wise critics with 
a joyful countenance, if they would only treat this 
interesting matter seriousl5% and play fair. 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. PAGE 

I. Bacon "Shows his Head" i 

II. Marston and Hall reveal Bacon ... 12 

III. The Scandal: External Evidence ... 32 

IV, The Scandal : Internal Evidence • • • 53 

V. Was the Author of the Shakespeare Poems 

and Sonnets a Scholar? 66 

VI. Ben Jonson and Bacon 81 

VI I. Progress and Prejudice 107 

VIII. Some Orthodox Shakespearians put in the 

Witness-Box 116 

IX. The Proofs of Baconian Authorship as Deduced 
from the History of the Three Prominent 
Elizabethan Earls — Southampton, Pem- 
broke, AND Essex 129 

X. The Proof from Contemporary Letters and 

Books 169 

XI. The Sonnets 190 

XII. Of the Parallelisms and Identities between 
THE Plays of Shakespeare and the Acknow- 
ledged Works of Bacon 251 

XIII. Had Bacon a Mistress, or was he Inclined to 

^^ BE A Misogynist? 253 

XIV. Bacon as a Poet 267 



xii CONTENTS 

CHAP. FACE 

XV. New Evidence connecting Bacon with Pallas 

AND THE Hyphenated Shake-speare . . 281 

XVI. Some Notable Megalomanic Features in the 

Character of Francis Bacon .... 293 

XVII. Certain Unusual Circumstances and Hints 
connected with the Poems and Plays of 
William Shakespeare 307 

XVIII. Why did Francis Bacon Conceal his Identity? 

Summary of Difficulties and Objections . 320 

APPENDIX 351 

INDEX 371 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Portrait of Francis Bacon, from the First Edition 

of Sylva Sylvarum Frontispiece 

Facsimile of the Opening Stanzas of the "Rape of 

Lucrece" (First Edition) . . . To face page 4 

Facsimile of the Last Stanzas of the 

"Rape of Lucrece" (First Edition) . „ „ 6 



IS IT SHAKESPEARE? 

CHAPTER I 

BACON " SHOWS HIS HEAD " 

I HAVE often thought that the Sonnets were the real keys 
wherewith the great secret of the true authorship might 
perchance be discovered, and I have been extremely 
surprised that all the prominent Baconians for the most 
part confined their researches and attacks to the ground 
occupied by the immortal Plays of William Shakespeare. 
And yet the Sonnets have every appearance of being 
autobiographical. They seem to be genuine though 
artfully-concealed presentiments of striking events and 
passionate feelings that had occurred again and again 
in the author's personal experience ; whereas we do not 
expect a tragedy or a comedy, or indeed any dramatic 
work put on the boards of a public theatre, to contain 
direct and emphatic allusions to the author's life. More- 
over, a very cursory survey of special phrases and parallel 
expressions in the Sonnets and the Plays, will show at 
once that both the Sonnets and the Plays are undoubtedly 
the work of one and the same author. Yet, strange to 
say, the Baconians, who might reasonably expect here 
a rich mine for their explorations, have passed by the 
Sonnets and Poems with hardly a glance, and have left 
the many personal incidents in them to the tender mercies 
of thorough-paced Shakespearians, by whom they have 
been rent almost limb by limb in order to give to the 
mysterious "sole begetter," Mr. W. H., a local habitation 
and a name. 

^ A 



t BACON "SHOWS HIS HEAD" 

I hope to show that the Sonnets are much better 
keys to unlock the secret than the Plays, and contain 
by far the strongest and clearest indications of the true 
author. 

For instance, we will take Sonnet xxvi., and see how 
it reveals the very name of the hidden author. 

XXVI 

Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage 

Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit, 

To thee I send this written embassage, 

To witness duty, not to show my wit : 

Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine 

May make seem bare in wanting words to show it, 

But that I hope some good conceit of thine 

In thy soul's thought (all naked) will bestow it ; 

Till whatsoever star that guides my moving 

Points on me graciously with fair aspect. 

And puts apparel on my tattered loving. 

To show me worthy of thy sweet respect : 

Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee, 

Till then not show my head where thou may'st prove me. 

This Sonnet, as all critics admit, has an interesting 
and remarkable resemblance to the dedication of Lucrece 
to the Earl of Southampton in 1594, which was signed by 
William Shakespeare. This Sonnet is certainly addressed 
to some one in high position ; the words vassalage and 
embassage settle that. It also seems to be the concluding 
Sonnet (L'envoi) of a sequence (xviii.-xxvi.), where 
deep love and admiration are expressed for a high-bom 
youth, and where the author, although he rather au- 
daciously claims immortality for his verse (S, xvii.), 
still for " fear of trust " does not go the whole length of 
expressing his love, or, as it appears, even his name as 
yet, but the verses or " books " that he sends are to be 
the "dumb presagers" of his "speaking breast" (S. xxiii,). 
And he finishes, in this last Sonnet of the sequence 
(xxvi.), by hoping that his young friend will have such 
a " good conceit " of the bare verses sent, that he will 
take them in and cherish them in their nakedness ; and 



THE DEDICATION 3 

then, the author hints, if his stars lend auspicious help 
to his future movements — 

" T/ien may I dare to boast how I do love thee, 
Till then not s/toia >ny head where thou may'st prove me." 

Now we shall see how the author lets out the great 
secret in those words show my head. 

This Sonnet (xxvi.) naturally leads us to make a 
closer examination of the dedication of Lucrece, with 
which it is evidently connected. 

The dedication reads as follows : 

THE RAPE OF LUCRECE 

TO THE 

Right Honourable HENRY WRIOTHESLEY 
Earle of Southampton, and Baron of Titchfield 

The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end : whereof 
this Pamphlet without beginning is but a superfluous Moity. 
The warrant I have of your Honourable disposition, not the 
worth of my untutored Lines, makes it assured of acceptance. 
What I have done is yours, what I have to do is yours, being 
part in all I have, devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my 
duety would show greater ; meane time, as it is, it is bound to your 
Lordship : to whom I wish long life still lengthned with all 
happinesse. 

Your Lordship's in all duety, 

William Shakespeare. 

Now all this seems plain and straightforward enough, 
except the apparently unmeaning and unnecessary 
remark about " this Pamphlet without beginning " 
being " but a superfluous Moity." 

Such a curious statement naturally leads one to 
examine the " beginning " of the Pamphlet in its first 
edition as presented and dedicated to Southampton, 
and lo ! Bacon " shows his head " at once, for the first 

two lines are headed by this monogram pg, i.e. Fr. B,, 
which may well be called also a superfluous moiety of 
Fr. B|acon, Fr. representing one half of his name with 
the superfluous B flowing over from the other half. 



4 BACON "SHOWS HIS HEAD" 

This seems promising, but the first few words of the 
dedication seem to harp on the antitheses " without 
end " and " without beginning." Let us therefore, 
since we have taken away the author's head from the 
first two hues where he showed it, and so have rendered 
the Pamphlet without beginning, let us take away the 
endings of the last two lines, and see if we can find whose 
is the love that is " without end." We do this, and out 
comes BACON, neither more nor less. By itself, without 
the index finger of the last line of Sonnet xxvi., this is 
a neat and curious discovery, and the credit of it is due 
to a German publisher and printer who has devoted 
much time to the Bacon-Shakespeare secret, and has 
recently written several books on the subject. I claim 
to have rendered the discovery much more valid and 
probable, nay, almost certain, by connecting it with 
the promise of the author, in a Sonnet that was evidently 
connected with Lucrece, to " show his head " if things 
turned out well and his friend wished to prove his 
identity. 

The first two lines of Lucrece are : 

FRoM the besiged Ardea all in post 
Borne by the trustless wings of false desire. 

The last two are : 

The Romans plausibly did give consent 
To Tarquin's everlasting banishment. 

FINIS 

If we take all the larger capitals in the first two lines 
we get " Fra. B.," which is another way of signing Bacon's 
name, and is exactly the moiety of the whole signature, 
viz. " Fra. B|acon," and is again, as before, a superfluous 
or overflowing moiety. 

There is another " undesigned coincidence " which 
lends a great air of probabihty to this little cipher device 
at the beginning of Lucrece. It is this. No doubt Bacon 
shows his head pretty plainly, or seems to do so, when 




THE R A P E O F 

L V C R E C E. 

FRoM thcbefiegcdArcIea'allinpofl'^ 
Borne by the truftleffe wings of talfe defirc, 
Luft-brcathedTARQyiN,leaucs the Roman hofr, 
And to Colatium bcai es the lightleflc fire, 
Which in pale embers hid, lurkes to afpire. 
And girdle with embracing flames, the waft 
Of CoLATiNEsfairloue,LvcRECE thechad-^ 

Haply that name of chaft, vnhaply fet 
Thii batcleffc edge on his kcene appetite: 
VVhenCoLATiNKvnwifelydidnotlet, 
To praife the cleare vnmatchcd red and white, 
VVhichtriumphtinthatskieofhisdelight: • 
Where mortal ftars as bright as heaues Beauties, 
With pure afpcvSs did him peculiar ducties* 




'M^^'^ 



OPExMNG STANZAS OF THE FIRST EDITION OF 
THE "RAPE OF LUCRECE " 



To /lice />. 4 



THE SIGNATURE 5 

we take the hints of the dedication and the Sonnet xxvi. 
in connection with it : but some one might say, " Oh, 
it's notliing, no proof at all, merely a coincidence, a mere 
chance arrangement of letters ; " and then another 
objector might add, " Fra. B. is not the usual signature 
of Bacon to his correspondents or his lovers;" and another, 
would exclaim, " I can safely say, and you may take my 
word for it, that Bacon never signed a letter in the 
absurd form Fra B. in his life." 

In reply to such assertions, I would simply adduce 
the following remarkable coincidence, viz., that when 
Francis Bacon was about twenty (c. 1580) he wrote 
several letters to his uncle and aunt (Lord and Lady 
Burghley) all signed B. Fra. 

This additional piece of corroborative evidence was 
unknown to the German investigator, nor did he bring 
in the Sonnet as an auxiliary, so that now the force of 
the Baconian proof is considerably strengthened. How- 
ever, as no one took any heed of it when he produced 
it in 1900, I do not suppose any one will deign to notice 
it now, or if they do, it will be deemed quite sufficient 
to say that the printer put it so by accident, that the 
author's MS. began so by accident and finished so by 
accident, that the " moiety " and " duety " and " begin- 
ning " and " end " were all expressions of no particular 
significance, tending rather to confuse than elucidate 
the poem, and that as for Fra. B. being like Bacon's 
" head," it was no more like it than an Aunt Sally at 
a fair. However, such criticisms have now somewhat 
lost their edge, and are too common and blunt to disturb 
our equanimity. But before they begin to slash, I 
would ask them to consider also the following points 
connected with this same piece of evidence. The North- 
umberland Manuscript, which is about the only piece 
of documentary evidence we possess that connects the 
two names Shakespeare and Bacon, has among other 
scribblings this line from Lucrece : 

"Revealing day through everie Crany peepes." 



6 BACON "SHOWS HIS HEAD" 

It is not scribbled down quite correctly, because line 
1086 of Lucrece is : 

" Revealing day through everie Crany spies." 

This shows that the writer quoted it from memory. But 
is it not also a hint from some one that the revealing 
light of day would peep out of some cranny, some hole 
or corner of Lucrece, one of these days ? 

Strange to say, though Spedding notices the MS. at 
some length, and quotes the line, he does not say where 
the line came from originally. Possibly he did not know. 
Certainly Lucrece had no revealing light to throw on his 
Bacon, and yet he knew Bacon better than any one else 
in the whole world ! 

The other point is, that if we include the word FINIS 
which is placed underneath the last two lines, and take its 
first letter F, and draw a line at an angle upwards through 
the last two lines in the direction of ba and con, we get 
F. BACON, thus : 

The Romaines plausibly did give con^/ sent 
To Tarquins everlasting ba /^ishment. 



f/inis 

And this is a way that some writers have used to get 
their names upon the title-pages of their works in such 
a manner as to be there without any one noticing them. 

Some of the Shakespeare Quartos have words oddly 
divided on their title-pages, and the syllable con, the latter 
part of Bacon, is often prominently put forward there, 
but the general result is too fanciful at present to attach 
much importance to it, unless it be considerably improved. 

Nor must I omit another circumstance which is at 
least rather suggestive. 

Ben Jonson in 1616 dedicated his Epigrams to William 
Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and plainly insinuated that 
in some dedications titles had been changed in a more 
audacious manner than Ben Jonson ventured to imitate, 



THE RAPE OFLA^CRECE. 

This fayd, he ftrookc his band vpon his bread, 

And kifl: the fatal! knife to end his vow : 

Andtohisprotcftationvrg'd the reft, ^# 

Who wondring at him^ did his words allow. 

Then ioyntlic to the ground their knees tlicv bow. 
And that dcepc vow which Brvtvs niade before, 
He doth againe repeat, and that they fvvorc, . 

When they had flvorne to this aduifcd doonie, 
They did conclude to bcare dead Lvcrece thence, 
To fliew her bleeding bodie thorough Roome, 
And Co to publifli T a r q^v i ns fowlc offence^ 
Which being done, with ipccdic diligence. 

The Rom^ines plaufibly did glut confcnt, . 

To T A R Q^v I N s eucrlafting banilhmcnt. 

N 
FINIS. 



CLOSING STANZAS OF THE FIRST EDITION OF 
THE "RAPE OF LUCRECE '' 

To face />. 6 



ANOTHER DEDICATION 7 

and also that some authors' consciences caused them 
of necessity to employ a cipher for concealment. This 
may be a hit at the cipher and dedication of Lucrece 
before noticed, for I verily believe Jonson knew far more 
of the Bacon-Shakespeare secret than any of his con- 
temporaries, as I hope to show further on. 
The dedication of the Epigrams in 1616 is : 

" My Lord, —While you cannot change your merit I dare not 
change your title ; it was that made it, not I. Under which 
name I here offer to your I..ordship the ripest of my studies, 
my Epigrams ; which though they carry danger in the sound, 
do not therefore seek your shelter; for when I made them, I 
had nothing in my conscience to expressing of which I did need 
a cipher." 

The " head " or beginning of Lucrece is strictly a 
cipher in one of the senses of the word, for the definition 
of the N. E. D. gives us " (6) An intertexture of letters, 
especially the initials of a name, a literal device, mono- 
gram," and quotes an example from Massinger of date 
1631. 

While on this word cipher let me say plainly that I 
am an utter disbeliever in the cryptograms and biliteral 
ciphers of certain well-advertised American authors, 
Mrs. Gallup to wit, and others. They are hardly worthy 
of notice, and have done more to discredit the discussion 
of an unusually interesting literary problem than any- 
thing else I can call to mind. 

Whether there is or is not a cipher in the first folio 
Shakespeare remains for the present a question certainly 
not to be determined off-hand. But I must say that 
the likelihood of finding one there is by no means to 
be dogmatically set aside. Mr. Sidney Lee is not justified 
in saying positively there is no cipher in the folio Shake- 
speare. I am surprised that he ventures on so bold 
and dogmatic an assertion, seeing that he is a member 
of the Bibliographical Society, and therefore in a good 
position to be acquainted with a neat little monograph 
on Some Elizabethan Cipher-hooks to be found in the 



8 BACON "SHOWS HIS HEAD" 

Transactions of that Society, and read i8th March 1901. 
We learn there that the pohticians of the parties of 
Essex and Burghley Hved in an atmosphere, so to speak, 
of ciphers, and such men as the two brothers Anthony 
and Francis Bacon would be thorough experts of the art. 
The ciphers were of the most varied kinds — astronomical, 
zodiacal, multi-literal, cabalistic, and cryptogrammatic* 
It seems that Lord Burghley's favourite device was the 
zodiacal, i.e. using the signs of the zodiac for the names 
of persons referred to. This reminds me that when look- 
ing at the well-known Baconian relic called the Valerius 
Terminus MS., I noticed some signs of this kind scribbled 
at the foot of a page ; but whether an attempt has been 
made to translate them, I know not. These were sup- 
posed only to refer to the date of the MS. But the 
reading of this little monograph is apt to make one less 
of a scoffer at those who work on the Bacon-cipher tread- 
mill. I fear these workers are in many cases mere 
" cranks," but the theory itself is certainly not an 
" empty delusion." Neither do I believe that the 
italicised words in the Sonnets are without some hidden 
allusion. 

This monogram cipher of Lucyece is one of the very 
few direct, external, and visible proofs that we have as 
to the authorship of the Sonnets. It is surprising, as 
we shall see, to what a degree this Baconian evidence 
simplifies the Sonnets controversy, and the question 
of the youth to whom they were addressed. There has 
been for many years almost a pitched battle between 
the Herbertites and the Southamptonites, and the most 
prominent general of the contending armies has com- 
pletely changed his colours, or rather his camp, at least 
once, and perhaps more often, for I have only lately 
come on the field and go by hearsay. I hear, too, that 
his last dictum is that Shakespeare had never any 

* Sir Robert Cecil writes to Anth. Bacon 19th May 1592 : " My lord desires 
you to send a cipher which you may make yourself — especially for his adver- 
tising of Names — which will serve, though the alphabets of Letters often be 
discovered." 



"SOMETHING ROTTEN" 9 

intimate acquaintance with William Herbert at all, or at 
most nothing much beyond official recognition. 

Well then, in that case, who in the world wrote the 
Sonnets ? 

The amount of labour and ingenuity that devoted 
and learned Shakespearians have bestowed upon eluci- 
dating the Sonnets has been enormous. For instance, 
in 1888 Gerald Massey sends forth a huge quarto of 
nearly 500 pages, entitled The Secret Drama of Shake- 
speare's Sonnets, and proves without a shadow of doubt 
in his own mind, when and where Shakespeare wrote the 
Sonnets, to whom and for whom they were addressed, 
and without hesitation fixes on the Dark Lady and the 
Rival Poet. 

Two years later, in 1890, Mr. Thomas Tyler, with 
equal, if not greater, knowledge of the subject, writes 
another most learned, careful, and exhaustive book on 
these same Sonnets, proving conclusively (?) that Shake- 
speare wrote all the Sonnets to one young man, Mr. W. H., 
whose Christian name was William, and his full title 
William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and that Shakespeare 
hardly had any intimacy with the young nobleman that 
Gerald Massey had backed through thick and thin for 
500 pages. Moreover, he brings forward a totally differ- 
ent Dark Lady and a different Rival Poet. 

Then the general comes on the scene (having recently 
changed his tactics), and authoritatively declares, that 
as for Mr. Tyler's young man William Herbert, and his 
Dark Lady, Mistress Fitton, he, Sidney Lee, could say 
with confidence that Shakespeare had no acquaintance 
with either of them, except of a most distant and reserved 
nature. Now, when great experts and men perfectly 
competent to deal with the question annihilate each 
other in this ridiculous fashion, lookers-on naturally 
conclude that there must be something rotten in the 
state of Denm.ark — something radically wrong with all 
three elucidators — and so, I contend, there was. They 
were all three building on a wrong foundation, arguing 
from false premises, and assuming the wrong author 



lo BACON "SHOWS HIS HEAD" 

for the very subject-matter they were deahng with. 
They assumed a plebeian to be the author instead of a 
patrician, they argued on the primary supposition of 
Wilham Shakespeare, backed up by a long line of tradi- 
tional authority, to which they attached such over- 
whelming importance, that the very mention of the 
patrician Bacon was left by them to the half-educated 
and the irrational ! Their mutually-destructive theories 
ought to have made them less dictatorial ; but some 
people are too confident either to take advice or to learn 
that they can possibly be wrong. But, of all people, 
I ought to be least angry with these magisterial and 
self-sufficient Shakespearians, for it was the unpleasantly 
contemptuous tone of certain letters to the Times not 
very long ago, which first induced me to buy a few 
more special books and to give some pleasant hours to 
a subject in which I had previously only a passing inte- 
rest, and which I thought could not yet be decided for 
want of sufficient evidence. 

I by no means assert that there is absolutely complete 
evidence now. Indeed, for people who are prejudiced 
no evidence can be complete. But I claim to have 
added a few more bricks to the Baconian building, and 
also to have somewliat strengthened the foundation, 
which to so many sane and sensible people of my own 
acquaintance seems an absolutely rotten and foolishly 
impossible one. 

But before I quite leave this important evidence 
from Lucrece and the Sonnet corresponding to it, I will 
bring forward some hints from Bacon's acknowledged 
works which seem to favour the reality and genuineness 
of this Lucretian discovery, and later on will attack the 
still more curious problem of the " Scandal " in the 
Sonnets, after I have shown that there can be little 
doubt that two contemporary satirists had discovered 
Bacon's secret as early as 1598. Both these chapters 
of evidence will be quite new. 

Enough, and perhaps more than enough, has been 
said of this first item of evidence that I adduce. 



THE STOCK ARGUMENT ii 

The next chapter, I hope, will be even more novel 
and convincing. Shakespearians are always dwelling on 
their great stock argument that " all the poet's con- 
temporaries recognised him as the author of his own 
works, and that they, if any are to judge, ought to be 
best able to decide the question of authorship. They 
did decide it unanimously, and there's an end of the 
controversy to all who are not ' irrational,' or are not 
' cranks ' best in an asylum." 

This, or something like it, is their favourite fike de 
resistance. I shall now try to show that two well-known 
contemporaries, at least, knew that Bacon wrote the 
Shakespeare Poems, and whispered the secret pretty 
distinctly, but no one seemed to hear it. 



f ir- \ ^ 



CHAPTER II 

MARSTON AND HALL REVEAL BACON 

It is an odd circumstance that we cannot be at all certain 
what manner of man Shakespeare was in facial expression. 
The arguments and controversies about the various 
portraits of him which have come down to us, have filled 
hundreds of pages without much positive result. He 
seems to have had a reddish hue (Rufus) and to have 
been a man of good presence ; that seems about as much 
as we can say, and that is not positively agreed upon. 
Of course this " personal matter " is very interesting 
to some people. As late as July 26, 1902, a contributor 
to Notes and Queries thought he had made a discovery 
in this direction at last — Shakespeare was a man with 
large lips. Here is his evidence. 

Marston in 1598, at the end of Pigmalion's Image, 
gives to some contemporary writer the nickname "Labeo," 
in these words : 

" So Labeo did complain his love was stone, 
Obdurate, flinty, so relentless none ; " 

which certainly looks like a reference to Venus and 
Adonis (lines 200-201). 

The discoverer then tells us : " According to Smith's 
Latiji - English Dictionary, ' Labeo ' = ' the one who 
has large lips.' " He leaves it so, virtually considering 
it a Q.E.D. and that he has added a feature to Shake- 
speare's face. But I fear he has done nothing of the 
kind. He should have looked up his Horace. He 
would have found Labeo there,* and a note would most 
likely have told him that M. Antistius Labeo was a rather 

* " Labeone insanior inter 
Sanos dicatur." — L Sat., iii. 82. 



WHO WAS LABEO? 13 

famous lawyer who by his free and perverse tongue had 
offended his emperor, the sensitive Augustus. This will 
not help us much to the features of Shakespeare's face ! 
Moreover, the critics who have often enough exercised 
their ingenuity in trying to find out who this Labeo 
might be, who is mentioned more than once both by 
Hall and Marston, have generally said that Hall's Labeo 
was Marston, and as for Marston's Labeo have ignored 
him altogether. Then Dr. Grosart long ago showed that 
Hall's Labeo could not be Marston, for the good reason 
that Marston had not written anything then for Hall to 
refer to. Then it was suggested that Labeo was Chapman, 
a nasty thrust if really the case, for there was also a 
Labeo in classic times who translated Homer and made 
a frightful and unreadable hash of it. And now we have 
Labeo, a thick-Hpped man generally, and Shakespeare 
the thick-lipped one in particular. 

This will never do ; and it shows us the danger of play- 
ing with the names, chiefly of classic origin, with which 
Hall and Marston, and Ben Jonson and others of that 
age, interlarded their satires, comedies, and epigrams. 
These University wits were steeped in Horace, Juvenal, 
Persius, and Ovid, and thence brought forth a nickname 
from their retentive memory whenever an occasion 
required it. But we must be cautious in our attempts 
to unveil the personages satirised, for it does not always 
follow that because they are satirised under the same 
borrowed name, they are therefore the same persons. 
For instance, Marston has a Tubrio in one place, who 
is a very different character from a Tubrio he mentions 
in another place; but any two lewd-living, boisterous, 
military braggarts could be included under the generic 
name Tubrio. Indeed, many of the names constantly 
met with, such as Luxurio, Gullio, Fortunio, &c., 
are simply generic, and unless a striking detail is 
added, it is useless to try and decipher them. Thus in 
the Poetaster we hear a good deal about Crispinus or 
Cri-spinas, and some think Jonson is girding at Shake- 
speare, and some that Marston is the man meant. In 



14 MARSTON AND HALL REVEAL BACON 

fact he sometimes means one and sometimes the other, 
and so shields himself from direct libel. Once or twice 
he gives Crispinus his full name, Rufus Laberius Crispinus 
or Cri-spinas, and it has been thought that Rufus referred 
to Shakespeare's red hair, that Laberius referred to 
Shakespeare also, because Laberius was a playwright 
{mimographus) who used new and bombastic words. And 
as for the hyphenated Cri-spinas, that was clearly the 
hyphenated Shake-speare. 

There may be something in all this, but we must 
beware of carrying it too far. I would rather take 
Laberius to belong to Martial, Lib. vi. 14, which is a 
short epigram very appropriate to Shakespeare, and 
is a most likely source for Jonson to draw upon. But 
such things are mere details. They often, however, 
are useful (if we can be sure of them), in giving us 
Jonson's earHer views as to Shakespeare and Bacon. 
And the same may be said of Marston and Hall's 
use of Labeo, if what they meant could be clearly 
ascertained. 

Fortunately I have been able to make an identifica- 
tion of one of the personages in the Satires of Hall and 
Marston, which will prove of great value for deciding 
the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy. It is not mere 
guess-work, or a probable solution,' as so many of the 
so-called identities are, but direct, neat, and lucid. The 
veil was artfuUy adjusted 300 years ago, but I rather 
wonder that no one has hfted up even the comer of it, 
or even touched it until now. 

Its importance will be admitted when I say that it 
points out in a singularly clear manner that it was 
known to contemporaries that Bacon was the author of 
Venus and Adonis. 

The proof comes out in the literary war between 
Hall and Marston, our very early English satirists. 
Hall was first in the field with his Toothless Satires 
in 1597; they had been written perhaps some years 
earlier. Then came Marston in 1598 with his Pigmalion's 
Image and certain Satires (May 27), which he called his 



THE BOOKS ARE BURNT 15 

" first bloome of Poesy." He is bitter against his pre- 
decessor Hall, but for what reason does not appear, 
unless he felt forestalled by Hall in his own favourite 
vocation. 

Both satirists adopted the incisive method of Juvenal 
and Persius, being really the first of our nation thus 
to imitate the ancients. They were both very severe 
upon the vices of the court gallants and others in high 
place, especially Marston in his Scourge of Villainy 
which followed his Satires, shortly afterwards in the 
same year 1598 (Sept. 8). 

The consequence was that on the ist June 1599, 
Marston's Pigmalion (spelled Pygmalion in the Registers) 
and The Scourge of Villainy, and Hall's Satyres and 
several others, were suppressed and ordered to be burnt 
at the instance of Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
and Barlow, Bishop of London. And on June 4, Marston's 
books were burnt in the garden of the Stationers' Company 
with Davies' Epigrams and some others, and Hall's 
Satyres were stayed and Willobies A visa called in. This 
looks as if Whitgift (Bacon's friend and old tutor) had 
had some high influence brought on him to stop these 
libels, as they would certainly be very scandalous to 
those who knew the persons aimed at, and Bacon wanted 
publicity as little as possible. 

Now for the evidence that both these satirists knew 
Bacon's secret. 

Hall in the second book of his Satires, which he called 
(after Plautus) VirgidemicB, i.e. a bundle of rods or 
harvest of blows, brings on the scene a character for 
castigation whom he names Labeo, and attacks him 
thus : 

" For shame write better, Labeo, or write none, 
Or better write, or Labeo write alone ;" 

— Bk. IL, Sat. i., i. 

and finishes the satire by a refrain : 

" For shame write cleanly, Labeo, or write none." 

There is not much here to discover who Labeo is 



\^ 



14 MARSTON AND HALL REVEAL BACON 

fact he sometimes means one and sometimes the other, 
and so shields himself from direct libel. Once or twice 
he gives Crispinus his full name, Rufus Laberius Crispinus 
or Cri-spinas, and it has been thought that Rufus referred 
to Shakespeare's red hair, that Laberius referred to 
Shakespeare also, because Laberius was a playwright 
(mimographus) who used new and bombastic words. And 
as for the h57phenated Cri-spinas, that was clearly the 
hyphenated Shake-speare. 

There may be something in all this, but we must 
beware of carrying it too far. I would rather take 
Laberius to belong to Martial, Lib. vi. 14, which is a 
short epigram very appropriate to Shakespeare, and 
is a most likely source for Jonson to draw upon. But 
such things are mere details. They often, however, 
are useful (if we can be sure of them), in giving us 
Jonson's earlier views as to Shakespeare and Bacon. 
And the same may be said of Marston and Hall's 
use of Labeo, if what they meant could be clearly 
ascertained. 

Fortunately I have been able to make an identifica- 
tion of one of the personages in the Satires of Hall and 
Marston, which will prove of great value for deciding 
the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy. It is not mere 
guess-work, or a probable solution, as so many of the 
so-called identities are, but direct, neat, and lucid. The 
veil was artfully adjusted 300 years ago, but I rather 
wonder that no one has lifted up even the corner of it, 
or even touched it until now. 

Its importance will be admitted when I say that it 
points out in a singularly clear manner that it was 
known to contemporaries that Bacon was the author of 
Venus and Adonis. 

The proof comes out in the literary war between 
Hall and Marston, our very early English satirists. 
Hall was first in the field with his Toothless Satires 
in 1597 ; they had been written perhaps some years 
earlier. Then came Marston in 1598 with his Pigmalion's 
Image and certain Satires (May 27), which he called his 



THE BOOKS ARE BURNT 15 

*' first bloome of Poesy." He is bitter against his pre- 
decessor Hall, but for what reason does not appear, 
unless he felt forestalled by Hall in his own favourite 
vocation. 

Both satirists adopted the incisive method of Juvenal 
and Persius, being really the first of our nation thus 
to imitate the ancients. They were both very severe 
upon the vices of the court gallants and others in high 
place, especially Marston in his Scourge of Villainy 
which followed his Satires, shortly afterwards in the 
same year 1598 (Sept. 8). 

The consequence was that on the ist June 1599, 
Marston's Pigmalion (spelled Pygmalion in the Registers) 
and The Scourge of Villainy, and Hall's Satyres and 
several others, were suppressed and ordered to be burnt 
at the instance of Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
and Barlow, Bishop of London. And on June 4, Marston's 
books were burnt in the garden of the Stationers' Company 
with Davies' Epigrams and some others, and Hall's 
Satyres were stayed and Willobies Avisa called in. This 
looks as if Whitgift (Bacon's friend and old tutor) had 
had some high influence brought on him to stop these 
libels, as they would certainly be very scandalous to 
those who knew the persons aimed at, and Bacon wanted 
publicity as little as possible. 

Now for the evidence that both these satirists knew 
Bacon's secret. 

Hall in the second book of his Satires, which he called 
(after Plautus) VirgidemicB, i.e. a bundle of rods or 
harvest of blows, brings on the scene a character for 
castigation whom he names Labeo, and attacks him 
thus : 

" For shame write better, Labeo, or write none, 
Or better write, or Labeo write alone ;" 

— Bk. IL, Sat. i., i. 

and finishes the satire by a refrain : 

" For shame write cleanly, Labeo, or write none." 

There is not much here to discover who Labeo is 



\^ 



i6 MARSTON AND HALL REVEAL BACON 

intended for, and, as I have said, some have thought 
Marston suited the satire, and some Chapman, but all 
were doubtful. The inference from the lines quoted 
amounted to no more than this, (i) Labeo did not write 
alone, but in conjunction with or under cover of another 
author; (2) he was not a pure or moral writer, but of 
the impure and salacious school. Of course these infer- 
ences would suit many contemporaries, and Labeo still 
remains so far incognito, and unidentified. 

Early next year, 1598, three other books (iv.-vi.) of 
the VirgidemicB were issued by Hall, just before Marston 
had published his Satires, and in Book iv.. Sat. i., line 37, 
we find : 

" Ladeo is whip't, and laughs me in the face ; 

Why ? for I smite and hide the galled place. 

Gird but the Cynicks Helmet on his head, 

Cares he for Talus or his flayle of lead ? 

Long as the crafty Cuttle lieth sure 

In the black Cloude of his thick vomiture ; 

Who list complain of wronged faith or fame 

When he may shift it to another's name ? " 

Dr. Grosart quotes this in his edition of Hall's Poems, 
and calls it " Sphinxian," but he does not attempt the 
part of OEdipus, nor do I know any one that has. What 
can be inferred from the lines seems to be that Labeo 
was a man of mystery who had hidden himself from 
curious or pursuing eyes by the tactics of a cuttlefish, 
that is, by getting behind his own dark unwholesome 
productions, and by shifting them to another's name. 
Also that Hall had hidden or not revealed fully the 
galling secret of Labeo, and that therefore Labeo could 
laugh the matter off. 

These inferences did not lead to much, for there were 
many anonymous and mysterious writers of unwhole- 
some literature in that age. There are one or two other 
references to Labeo, but they are even less distinct than 
those quoted. 

But these are by no means all the inferences that 
can be drawn from this Sphinxian passage, and I shall 
venture next, though with somewhat of stage-fright, 



THE CYNIC'S HELMET 17 

to assume myself the rSle of (Edipus before an audience 
which I know is, up to the present, preponderatingly 
Shakespearian and orthodox. My solution will, I hope, 
forge another link in the chain that shall bind Labeo 
to Bacon. 

It turns on the word " Helmet." 

"Gird but the Cynicks Helmet on his head, 
Cares he for Talus or his flayle of lead ?" 

The Cynic, whether Diogenes in particular or his 
imitators as a class, used no Helmet as far as we know ; 
what then can be the allusion ? What was this Helmet 
that made Labeo so careless about the blows of that 
terrible smasher Talus ? I suggest that it was " The 
Honourable Order of the Knights of the Helmet," of 
which we hear so much in Francis Bacon's Gesta Gray- 
orum, that Hall hinted at. It is now admitted by Spedding 
and the best authorities that Bacon is responsible for 
this Device performed at his own Gray's Inn during the 
year 1594, and that he was the undoubted sole author 
of the Counsellors' speeches therein given. The Second 
Counsellor makes a fine oration, " advising the study of 
Philosophy," and if we want an accurate description 
of the innermost views and hopes of Francis Bacon, 
when in his megalomanic mood, we shaU find them there. 
He ends his speech as follows : 

"Thus, when your Excellency shall have added depth of 
knowledge to the fineness of [yourj spirits and greatness of your 
power, then indeed shall you be a Trismegistus ; and then when 
all other miracles and wonders shall cease by reason that you 
shall have discovered their natural causes, yourself shall be left 
the only miracle and wonder of the world." 

If a man has such a Helmet on what need he fear ? 
and Bacon, I believe, when cogitating on his schemes 
of power over Nature, often thought that he had that 
within him which might make him the wonder of the 
world, a second Trismegistus. When this Order of the 
Helmet was instituted, the name was taken, we are told, 
" in regard that as the Helmet defendeth the chief est 

B 



i8 MARSTON AND HALL REVEAL BACON 

part of the body, the head, so did he (the member) defend 
the head of the state." Each member kissed the Helmet 
when he took his vow, before girding it on. The articles 
of the Order are given at length in the Gesta Grayorum, 
and are worth reading in this connection, and indeed 
if any Knight of the Helmet kept them all, or even the 
greater part of them, he might well care nothing for 
Talus and his flail. 

This allusion may seem very far-fetched and im- 
probable to my adverse critics now, but it should be 
remembered that it was not far-fetched ihen, for it was 
only about four years or less since the Gesia had been 
performed, and the learned humours of the Knights 
of the Helmet would still be in the memory and on the 
tongues of London literary men.* 

I have another strong passage (from Hall) which is 
best noticed here. We have already seen several reasons 
for coupling the Cynic of the Satires with Bacon ; the 
following lines give further corroboration : 

" Nay, call the Cynick but a wittie foole, 
Hence to abjure his handsome drinking bol 
Because the thirstie swain with hollow hand 
Conveyed the stream to weet his drie weasand. 
Write they that can, tho' those that cannot doe, 
But who knowes that, but they that do not know." 

— Bk. II., Sat. i., 3. 

This too is Sphinxian, but I think that the original 
Latin distich prefixed to Venus and Adonis by the author, 
will enable us to play the part of OEdipus : 

" Vilia miretur vulgus, mihi flavus .A.pollo 

Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua." 

Here we have the " handsome drinking bowl " {pocula 
plena) which the Cynick author abjured (Bacon), while 
the " thirstie swain " (Shakespeare) " conveyed the 
stream " (of the Castalian fount) " with hollow hand 
to weet his drie weasand." 

The last two lines are written in riddling vein, but 

* For the best account see Spedding's Life, vol. i. pp. 325-343. 



BROAD HINTS 19 

they seem to mean : " They who can write, should 
write, although some who cannot write are esteemed 
as authors. But who knows about these last pseudo- 
authors and their secret ? Why, no one but a few privi- 
leged ones, and they all profess ignorance of the secret ; 
if asked, they do not know." If I prove correct in my 
suggestion, we have here a pretty clear reference to the 
mystery of William Shakespeare, and the full draughts 
of Castalian water in the Latin distich. 

Next then we come to Marston's satires, beginning 
with his Pigmalion's Image, which he strangely spells 
in piggish (Baconian ?) fashion, though an excellent 
classical scholar who ought to know the proper spelling. 

Here we have a poem founded on the model and lines 
of Venus and Adonis. It is a love-poem and not a satire, 
and we have naturally nothing helping us to find out 
Labeo here, but as an appendix to it the author writes 
some lines in " praise of his precedent Poem." 

Here we find Labeo again : 

"And in the end (the end of love, I wot), I << 

Pigmalion hath a jolly boy begot. / J^ 

So Labeo did complain his love was stone, 
Obdurate, flinty, so relentless none ; 
Yet Lynceus knows that in the end of this 
He wrought as strange a metamorphosis." 

Now this is helpful to us, for it shows us, or rather 
Lynceus shows us, what poem is referred to and who 
Labeo stands for. For it was Venus and Adonis that had 
the strange metamorphosis at the end, that of Adonis 
into a flower, quite as strange as the metamorphosis 
of Pigmalion's Image, and it was the author of Venus 
and Adonis who wrote or complained : 

"Art thou obdurate, flinty hard as steel — 
Nay, more than flint, for stone at rain relenteth?" 

— Venus and Adonis, 11. 199-200. 

And this is Labeo's complaint almost word for word ; 
so we arrive at the pretty certain conclusion, thanks to 
far-seeing Lynceus, that Labeo is intended for the author 



20 MARSTON AND HALL REVEAL BACON 

of Venus and Adonis, of which Marston had evidently 
a favourable opinion or he would not have used that 
sincerest of all flatteries — imitation. 

We have thus made a good step forward — Labeo is 
the writer of Venus and Adonis ; and as there is every 
reason to think that Marston used the name Labeo 
because Hall had used it, we are therefore able to infer 
that Hall and Marston both mean the same man. We 
therefore advance another step and infer that the author 
of Venus and Adonis did not write alone, that he shifted 
his work to " another's name," and acted like a cuttle- 
fish by interposing a dark cloud between himself and 
his pursuers. 

Our next step is a surer one still, it is nothing less 
than showing, by a clear, direct, and unmistakable piece 
of evidence, that Labeo, the author of Venus and Adonis, 
is no less a personage than Bacon. 

This strong proof is derived from Marston's Satires, 
published with his Pigmaliori's Image in 1598, several 
months after Hall's first three books of Virgidemice 
had appeared. Marston's Satire iv. is entitled Reactio, 
and is full of railing and censure on Hall's " toothless " 
snarls, and ridicules his prefatory Defiance to Envy through 
many lines and quotations. Marston in this Reactio 
goes through pretty well all the literary celebrities that 
Hall had aimed at, and defends them : 

" O daring hardiment ! 
At Bartas' sweet Setnains rail impudent ; 
At Hopkins, Sternhold, and the Scottish King." 

Sat. iv., 39-41. 

This was his " reaction " against Hall's satirical 
remarks on sacred poets, and sacred sonnets, against 
which, as Marston says, [He] " like a fierce enraged boar 
doth foam." He defends several other authors and 
books against the envious and spiteful satire of Hall, 
as he terms it. He defends the Magistrates'' Mirror, 
which Hall had ridiculed in his Book L, Sat. 5, but he 
seems to take no notice of Hall's attack on Labeo, al- 
though that attack was a marked and recurrent one. 



BACON'S MOTTO 21 

Labeo seems to be omitted from the list in the Reactio 
altogether. 

But it is not so really ; Laheo is there, but concealed 
in an ingenious way by Marston, and passed over in a 
line that few would notice or comprehend. But when it 
is noticed it becomes one of the most direct proofs we 
have on the Bacon-Shakespeare question, and what is 
more, a genuine and undoubted contemporary proof. 
The missing Labeo, the author of Venus and Adonis, 
appears under a Latin veil in the following interrogatory 
line addressed to Hall : 

"What, not mediocria firma from thy spite?" 

— Sat. iv., 77. 

that is to say, " What, did not even mediocria firma 
escape thy spite ? " That Latin veil is thin and 
transparent enough in all conscience. It's Bacon's 
OWN Motto, and I am gazing at it now, finely en- 
graved over that well-known portrait of Fr and sous 
Baconus Baro de Verulam, which faces the frontis- 
piece of my early edition of his Sylva Sylvarum* 
" Surely you have blundered like the rest of the 
cranks," I seem to hear the Shakespearians say; 
" surely it was a motto common to many families and 
proves nothing." The thought made me refer to our 
Smart Society's Bible, edited by Burke, and there I 
found that no one but the Earls of Verulam or the 
Bacon family has used that motto. I am reassured,! 
and I come to the strange conclusion that after three 
hundred years of mistaken identity the true author of 

* This motto apparently came from Sir Nicholas Bacon, for at the trial of 
Sir Walter Raleigh in 1603, the Lord Chief Justice (Popham) said : " It was 
the posy of the wisest and greatest counsellor of his time in England." In 
medio spatio mediocria Jirma locantnr. So it seems that part of the posy 
formed a motto for arms. 

t In the matter of general acceptance by its readers, Burke's Bible may 
be said to be superior to its time-honoured namesake which begins with the 
Pentateuch. For Burke is opposed by far fewer heretics and free-thinkers, 
and has never yet been printed in a Polychrome edition, of varying authority. 
Hence my reassurance. 



22 MARSTON AND HALL REVEAL BACON 

Venus and Adonis is discovered under the very thin 
device of his own heraldic motto. 

Marston has been edited and reprinted and annotated 
again and again, but this odd Hne has never received, 
as far as I know, a single word of notice. What shall 
we say to all this ? I can think of nothing more appro- 
priate than the expression Professor Dowden used when 
he referred to one of Judge Webb's Baconian errors — 
" Did you ever ? " 

But I have another unnoticed piece of evidence from 
Marston's Scourge of Villainy. Unfortunately it is rather 
of the nature of " crank " or " cipher " evidence, and 
therefore those who believe that Bacon never used any 
alphabetical devices in any part of his works, had better 
skip this evidence. 

For the sake of those who have not pre-judged the 
case of Bacon's literary concealments, I will produce it. 

It is a pleasant episode in the midst of Marston's 
biting and libellous satires. He suddenly breaks off 
while apparently speaking against the affected and 
senseless character of much of the contemporary drama 
and poetry, and addresses an unnamed litterateur of 
those days in the following strain : 

" Far fly thy fame, 
Most, most of me beloved ! whose silent name 
One letter bounds. Thy true judicial style 
I ever honour ; and, if my love beguile 
Not much my hopes, then thy unvalued worth 
Shall mount fair place, when apes are turned forth." 

— Scourge of Villanie^ Sat. ix. 

Who can this be ? Praise from Marston, the severe 
satirist, is most unusual. Who was this genius that was 
to rise by his own " unvalued worth when apes {i.e. 
actors or imitators) are turned forth " ? I thought at 
once of Marston's known appreciation of Shakespeare ; 
he evidently knew the works that went by his name 
well, and imitation of Hamlet and other Shakespeare 
plays, or rather reminiscences of them, can be frequently 
traced in Marston's dramas. It has also been stated 



THE "SILENT NAME" 23 

before that his Pigmalion was both in metre and style 
an imitation of the Venus and Adonis. Therefore it 
did not seem unhkely that in this rising genius " most, 
most of me beloved," Marston might refer to Shakespeare. 
Did the passage afford any clue ? Yes, one of a very 
Sphinx-like character. His name is alluded to, " one 
letter bounds " it, and it is a " silent name," i.e. I suppose, 
an " unuttered name." Is there a name of one letter ? 
Well, there are several such — Dee, Jay, Kaye, &c., but 
not one suitable to the case. At last it struck me that 
F was the one enclosing letter, and that Marston knew 
much more than I thought. For F is the letter that 
" bounds " the other two where Bacon " shows his head " 

in the beginning of Lucrece, pg, and it bounds his 
name at the end also, where the F of Finis bounds the 
BA CON of the two last lines. And that name was a 
" silent name," not uttered either in the vestibule or 
any other part of Lucrece. 

Indeed, as far as that vestibule was concerned, an 
" ape " or " poet-ape " was in possession, and Marston 
plainly says that he did not expect the man he addresses, 
and whose " judicial style " he did " ever honour," 
would mount to his right position till the " apes are 
turned forth." All this, I say, looks as if Marston knew 
the Baconian secret thoroughly, and had either recog- 
nised Bacon's head and tail or had been told of it. Of 
course, I know well enough that all I have been bringing 
forward in this last page or two may be nothing but 
fantastical rubbish, and I shall certainly not call any one 
irrational who won't believe it. But though I admit 
that this last " one letter " proof stands on a much 
weaker foundation than does the hidden allusion to 
Bacon's motto, I do not think it quite unworthy of being 
offered to the critics. But both these proofs may be 
utterly demolished without interfering at all with the 
general argument and force of my present work. 

Judge Webb introduced one argument about the 
" noted weed," which was demolished as soon as seen 
by every critic. It was this that brought out Professor 



24 MARSTON AND HALL REVEAL BACON 

Dowden's "Did you ever ? " and it has gone a long way 
towards depreciating his excellent summary. But one 
mistake no more damns a book than one swallow makes 
a summer. Qui s'excuse s'accuse, and it is true that 
I am rather doubtful about my last " one letter " dis- 
covery. But if not Bacon, who on earth can Marston 
mean ? Was there another fellow of the same name 
and the same motto ? Oh yes, there was his brother 
Anthony. Well, I will accept any one on sufficient 
evidence, and will be pleased to hear of it. As for the 
Marston evidence, there is this that I can say with 
certainty — he alludes more than once to a rising literary 
genius whom he loves, so he says, as his own self. He 
expresses a personal literary devotion in stronger terms 
than were usual even in those days of adulation. 

Take this further example from his play of What 
You Will, Act. II., Sc. I. : 

" Or the deere spirit acute Canaidos 
(That Aretine, that most of me beloved 
Who in the rich esteeme I prize his soul 
I terme myself)." 

Taking this and comparing it with the identical expres- 
sions in the " one letter " passage from the Scourge of 
Villainy above, there can be little hesitation in asserting 
that they refer to the same man. That man is Bacon 
surely. The appellation of " Aretine " is quite proper 
to the author of Venus and Adonis, for he appears through- 
out the poem to be trying " his hand with Aretine on a 
licentious canvas," as Boswell remarked of Shakespeare 
long ago. 

The fact is both Marston and Hall were " moral " 
satirists, and were genuine doubtless in their detestation 
of the vices of the age. Indeed, Hall became an excel- 
lent bishop, and Marston, as it seems, spent the latter 
years of his life in a vicarage and with the cure of souls. 
I believe they both, especially Marston, admired and 
esteemed the lofty genius and soul of the " concealed " 
poet, but they thought he had prostituted it by the 
lascivious and unclean nature of his beautiful verse. 



BACON'S EARLY "TOYS" 25 

" For shame write cleanly, Labeo, or write none," says 
Hall, and Marston, if I am correct in my surmise, calls 
him an " Aretine " and dubs him Canaidos, though he 
loves him. It is within my knowledge that Nash was 
thought to be the " Aretine " of that day by his fellows, 
and that he himself almost assumed that title, and there- 
fore it may be that Marston was referring to him. But 
there is no evidence that Marston was a student of Nash 
and an imitator of him, as we know was the case with 
Marston in regard to the Shakespeare poems and plays.* 
Moreover, I think Nash appears in the Scourge of Villainy 
branded with the vilest opprobrium, and so I hold to 
Bacon as being most likely the man Marston means. 

Many of that age who admired Bacon's other sterling 
qualities, regretted his early licence of love, and his 
" phantasticall " devotion to such " toys " as plays 
and sonnets. Such were Sir Thomas Bodley, the Cecils, 
father and son, and the Queen herself. I often think 
that it was from causes of this kind mainly, that Bacon's 
promotion in his uncongenial career was so long delayed. 

And then there was the Scandal too. What does 
Marston mean by Canaidos ? It is not without some 
hidden meaning, for it is an invented name, and not 
borrowed out of the common stock of Juvenal, Persius, 
or Horace, whence the University wits drew their nick- 
names for the most part. What if it implies the similarly 
sounding word " Kunaidos," which would lead us to 
" Cynsedus," and some vile form of " Cynicism " ? I 
hope not. But about this time or a bit later, according 
to my theor}^ of the Sonnets, Bacon was undoubtedly 
" vile esteemed," and there were many mendacia famcB 
rolled like a sweet morsel under the tongues of the envious 
vulgar. Those connected with the garrulous theatrical 

* " A horse ! a horse ! my kingdom for a horse I 
Looke thee, I speak play scraps." 

— Marston's What You Will, Act II., Sc. i. 
Marston has several other instances, especially from Hamlet, which latter 
give a plausibility to an earlier Hatnlct than we now possess. He also has a 
quotation from Richard III., Act I., i. 32 : " Plots ha' you laid? inductions 
dangerous." 



26 MARSTON AND HALL REVEAL BACON 

world, which always has its touch of a cynicism of some 
kind, would be sure to hear of it. Neither Ben Jonson 
in his early days, or when supreme at the " Mermaid " 
later on, nor yet his literary " sons " who viewed him 
as a dictator, would be so delicate as to taboo this un- 
pleasant subject over their sack and pickled herring, 
and I am surprised we have not heard more about this 
scandal in contemporary satires. But there was the 
Star Chamber and the censors, and Bacon's powerful 
friends, to suppress and eradicate such references. Pig- 
malion, the Satires, and the Scourge of Villainy were 
all burnt, and others were " stayed," as we know. This 
partly accounts for the reticence. 

But Marston elsewhere speaks more pointedly of 
the two great Shakespeare Poems ; there can be no doubt 
about the passage I shall next quote. A sense of personal 
pique at unfair treatment is plainly exhibited here. Is 
he (Marston) to be muzzled while the freedom of the 
press is readily granted to lewd poems fathered and 
signed by a William Shakespeare, a mere trencher-slave ? 
Shall poems which " magniiicate " the lust of a goddess 
of Jove's Olympian court, or tell the suggestive story 
of " Lucrece rape," be endorsed by archiepiscopal sign- 
manual, while his own, the production of a scholar and 
a gentleman, are muzzled and threatened ? That was 
the sore point, as he clearly states : 

" Nay, shall a trencher-slave extenuate 
Some Lucrece rape and straight magnificate 
Lewd Jovian lust, whilst my satiric vein 
Shall muzzled be, not daring out to strain 
His tearing paw?" 

\ — Scourge of Villanic, iii. adjinem. 

\ 

i If it be thought strange or contradictory that a poet 

' should be first praised and called " most beloved " " deere 
spirit," with other friendly epithets, and then vilified 
almost in the same breath, it should be remembered 
that the satirists of that age made it their object to lash 
current vices irrespective of personal friendship or even 
ties of blood. The rather free frontispiece of the Scourge 



A CONDEMNATION 27 

of Folly (1611) shows this. Here we have Folly repre- 
sented as hoisted on Time's back, untrussed and ready 
for castigation by a wit who is flourishing his lash, and 
saying, " Nay, up with him, if he were my brother," 
The wit was John Davies of Hereford, author of many 
other poems besides the rare Scourge of Folly, and with 
a large circle of acquaintance among the upper and 
middle classes, whom he did not spare. 

It must be admitted, that if we examine closely the 
possible allusions to the Shakespearian drama in Hall 
and Marston's satires, we shall find signs of condemnation 
rather than approval. But their condemnation is mainly 
in one direction only, in fact it amounts to the same 
dispraise which Jonson expressed when he said to Drum- 
mond that Shakespeare wanted art. Ben meant, I 
think, classical art and the Aristotelian Unities, and it 
was the same with the twin University scholars, Hall 
and Marston. 

Hall says (of the Shakespeare plays, as it seems) : 

"A goodly hoch-poch ; when vile Russettings 
Are matched with Monarchs and with mighty kings. 
A goodly grace to sober Tragick Muse 
When each base clowne his clumsie fist doth bruise, 
And show his teeth in double rotten row 
For laughter at his self-resembled showe." 

— VirgidefH., Lib. I., Sat. i. 39. 

Hall, Marston, and Jonson, all seem to be of the same 
opinion, that Shakespeare over-edited very considerably 
the plays he obtained by brokerage — " his huge long 
scraped stock," as Marston calls them. They thought 
he added far too many " shreds " of his own of a rough, 
rustic, railing, jesting, clownish character — for there 
must be rude clownage for the gallery ; it was a tradition 
of the old stage right away from the time of the miracle- 
plays, and Shakespeare as an actor-manager, with an 
eye to the main chance rather than to strict chaste classic 
art, could not or would not dispense with it. 

Even when Ben's severely classic Sejanus was brought 
out by Shakespeare's company at the Globe Theatre 



f 



28 MARSTON AND HALL REVEAL BACON 

in 1603, we find from Ben Jonson's preface to ttie play, 
that it was " not the same with that which was acted 
on the pubhc stage," the fact seeming to be that Shake- 
speare or some of the company, but Shakespeare for 
choice, had inserted gags, or additions, or alterations 
differing from Ben's MS. He says " a second pen had 
good share in it," and adds, perhaps satirically, that 
he was unwilling " to defraud so happy a genius of his 
right " by publishing his additional ornaments, and that 
he has replaced his own original composition and words 
in the published play. 

Surely this throws a flood of light on the Shakespearian 
authorship of the plays. Shall we be thought absurd 
if we suppose that Shakespeare of Stratford was a good 
practical playwright, with a rough and ready trenchant 
humour, acceptable on traditional lines with the greater 
part of the less cultured among the audience, but an 
eyesore to the better-instructed University critics, who 
looked for classic art ; and this Shakespeare wanted. 
But not only in the low-comedy scenes could Shakespeare 
insert his " shreds " ; he was a veritable factotum, and 
could bombast out a bragging blank verse — that is, he 
could fill up the lines he wrote, as well, in his own opinion, 
as the best of his fellow- writers. This was just the kind 
of man to over-edit a MS. obtained by brokerage, and 
to be unable to restrain himself from adding to and 
patching up even such high-class work as Ben Jonson's 
Sejanus, and Francis Bacon's immortal creations. We 
should read in connection with this the whole passage 
concerning Luscus — " Luscus, what's play'd to-day ? " 
— in the Scourge of Villainy. As I have said elsewhere, 
I hold Luscus, both here and in Jonson's Poetaster, to 
be Shakespeare the actor. 

Marston says, referring to Luscus : 

" Now I have him that ne'er of ought did speak 
But when of plays and players he did treat — 
Hath made a common-place book out of plays, 
And speaks in print : at least what e'er he says 
Is warranted by curtain plaudities. 
If e'er you hear him courting Lesbia's eyes, 



ji^^rc^* ^lA 



l^r' 



SHAKESPEARE'S TRUE POSITION 29 

Say (courteous sir) speaks he not movingly, 
From out some new pathetic tragedy ? 
He writes, he rails, he jests, he courts (what not ?) 
And all from out his huge long-scraped stock 
Of well-penn"d plays." 

— Scourge of Vtlianie, Sat. xi., 41. 

Here there seems a good biographical passage con- 
nected with the real original Stratford Shakespeare, 
and as they are so uncommonly rare, I make no excuse 
for quoting it. It is such passages as the above, which 
make me deprecate and detest the assertion that " Bacon 
wrote Shakespeare." It is not true, and it is not likely 
to be true. That Bacon wrote the Poems and Sonnets 
in their entirety absolutely, I fully believe, but the Plays 
are on another footing. I do not call to mind any part 
of the Poems or Sonnets that does not bear the well-defined 
stamp of a born aristocrat, who was the equal social 
companion of court gallants and maids of honour. A 
very large proportion of the contents of the Shakespeare 
Plays equally bear this well-defined stamp ; such early 
plays as Love's Labour's Lost seeming to me indubitably 
the work of a well-born and highly educated genius. 
But there is a not inconsiderable percentage of the matter 
of the Shakespeare Plays which seems unworthy (if I 
may be pardoned the blasphemy) of that philosophic, 
aristocratic, and megalomanic genius, by whose wondrous 
alchemy words that were dead, blossomed into living 
pictures ; and who, according to my contention, was the 
true original author of the immortal plays. But Shake- 
speare of Stratford edited them, gagged for them, arranged 
the stage machinery (though the true author was no 
novice at that business), produced them before the public, 
and very likely paid something for them, so they might 
well be called and esteemed Shakespeare's Plays. And 
when Ben Jonson, somewhat like Sir Walter Scott, threw 
dust in the eyes of the whole reading world by his in- 
genious prevarications in 1623, that appellation remained 
stereotyped in the minds of all till less than fifty 
years ago. 

There are several other passages in Marston's Satires 



30 MARSTON AND HALL REVEAL BACON 

where Bacon seems pretty clearly alluded to, and I shall 
refer to them in their proper connection later on. Marston 
spares him not, though he admires his intellect ; and 
if we are surprised at the unfeeling censure displayed 
now and then, we must remember that the office of a 
satirist is not to praise the virtues but to lash the vices 
of the masked contemporaries whom he puts into his 
verse. He calls Bacon, as I am inclined to think, a 
" Cynic " in several different passages. In one he 
addresses him, " Thou Cynic dog," and as a " currish 
mad Athenian," by this last word meaning a University' 
man by education. Marston insinuates elsewhere that 
his wits were rather " flighty," as we say : 

" Why in thy wits half capreal 
Let's thou a superscribed letter fall ? 
And from thyself unto thyself dost send, 
And in the same thyself thyself commend ?" 

—Sat. i., 7, &c. 

Now this letter-trick was almost peculiar to Bacon. 
He was constantly using it, as we see by what Spedding 
unfolds, " Capreal," a rather uncommon word, seems 
here to mean " fantastical," which was a term of obloquy 
often applied to poets, especially if they were high-born. 
Thus Puttenham's Arte of Poesie tells us : " Whoso is 
studious in the Arte, or shewes himself excellent in it, 
they call him in disdayne a phantasticall " (edition 
Arber, p. 33). The word is doubtless connected with 
capriole, the high-leaping or curvetting of a horse or 
goat. In fact, Marston in his Antonio and Mellida 
(Act v., i. 94) exclaims : 

" Now, cap'ring wits 
Rise to your highest mount." 

But Marston most of aU seems to dislike the comic low 
characters, and the " tricksy, learned, nicking strain " 
of the immortal plays. He says : 

" My soul adores judicial scholarship ; 
But when to servile imitatorship 
Some spruce Athenian pen is prenticM, 
'Tis worse than apish ; " 

— Scourge of Villanie, Sat. ix. 



MORE ALLUSIONS 31 

and again a few lines further on : 

" How ill methought such wanton jigging skips 
Beseemed his graver speech." 

All this looks very like Baconian allusion, for in the 
next lines comes the eulogy " Far fly thy fame," &c., 
quoted above, and the only eulogy in the whole of 
the Satires — where we get the " silent name one letter 

bounds," or pg. 

Such passages as are quoted in this chapter, and 
other new passages even stronger than these that I shall 
give in the chapter on Jonson and Bacon, should 
considerably invalidate the force of that great orthodox 
argument : " All Shakespeare's contemporaries acknow- 
ledged him to be the true author of his own works, and 
that irrevocably settles the question." 

I now approach, as promised, the unpleasant subject 
of the Scandal connected with the author of the Sonnets 
and with Bacon. 



CHAPTER III 

THE SCANDAL : EXTERNAL EVIDENCE 

The next evidence which I shall bring into open court 
in the following pages, is, what I fear some people will 
call the kind of evidence that should only be heard 
in camera. But a literary question can hardly be dis- 
cussed under such restrictions, and even were it pos- 
sible to nominate a joint-committee of well-known 
Shakespearians and Baconians to discuss privately 
" the Scandal of the Sonnets," and simply report the 
decision arrived at, without communicating the evi- 
dence that led to it, I do not for one moment suppose 
that any of the public, literate or illiterate, would be 
satisfied with such a bare result. 

So if we are to settle this qucestio vexata, we must 
take the savoury with the unsavoury, and make as few 
wry faces over it as possible. I think it will be more 
satisfactory, both to myself and my readers, if I intro- 
duce this unpleasant, but necessary, subject in the words 
of an orthodox Shakespearian, who is a fine scholar, 
and I suppose knew the Sonnets, backwards and for- 
wards, better than any man in the world. I refer to the 
late Samuel Butler, who in 1899, being then so little a 
novice in difficult problems of literature that he had 
already discovered the writer of the Odyssey to be a 
woman, tried his experienced hand on Shakespeare's 
Sonnets. 

He began with a good will, there is no doubt of that, 
for he tells us that before taking any steps to tackle 
the problem on its merits, he committed the whole body 
of the Sonnets to his memory, and thus became inde- 
pendent of his book, and had not the trouble of con- 
stantly turning over its leaves. Such a beginning, if 

3a 



A HIDDEN MYSTERY 33 

it did not end in success, at least deserved it. But 
alas, being a Shakespearian pure and simple, he found 
the problem, as they all find it, a much more awkward 
one than at first it seems. In his case, after a deal 
of honest hard work, he succeeded, so his friends said, 
in imparting additional obscurity to several of the plainer 
and more obvious Sonnets, and by a curious arrange- 
ment of earlier dates than had been ever tried before, 
he rendered some of the Sonnets perfectly unintelligible. 
But he was one of the very few who have ventured to 
hint at the tabooed subject of the "Great Scandal," and 
it is for that reason that I quote him before I cross the 
threshold myself. 

In his book, Shakespeare's Sonnets (pp. 86, ^y), he says : 

"No person can begin to read the Sonnets without feeling 
there is a story of some sort staring them in the face. They 
cannot apprehend it, but they feel that behind some four or five 
Sonnets there is a riddle which more or less taints the series, 
with a vague feeling as though the answer if found would be 
unwholesome. Their date is the very essence of the whole 
matter ; for the verdict that we are to pass upon some few of 
them — and these colour the others — depends in great measure 
on the age of the writer. ... If we date them early, we suppose 
a severe wound in youth, but one that was soon healed to perfect 
wholesomeness. If we date them at any age later than extreme 
youth, there is no escape from supposing what is really a malig- 
nant cancer. 

" Those who date the Sonnets as the Southamptonites and still 
worse the Herbertites do, cannot escape from leaving Shake- 
speare suffering, as I have said, from a leprous or cancerous 
taint, for they do not even attempt to show that he was lured 
into a trap, and if they did he was too old for the excuse to be 
admitted as much palliation." 

Mr. Butler grants that the story is a squalid one, but 
thinks Shakespeare's first few years in London were passed 
in squalid surroundings, and he ends by an appeal : 

"Considering his extreme youth, his poetic temper, con- 
sidering his repentance, and the perfect sanity of all his later 
work, considering further that all of us who read the Sonnets are 

C 



34 THE SCANDAL: EXTERNAL EVIDENCE 

as men who are looking over another's shoulder and reading a very 
private letter which was intended for the recipient's eyes and 
for no one else's, considering all these things, 1 believe that those 
whose judgment we should respect will refuse to take Shake- 
speare's grave indiscretion more to heart than they do the story 
of Noah's drunkenness." 

And further on (p. 122) he says : 

" One word more. Fresh from the study of the other great 
work in which the love that passeth the love of women is 
portrayed as nowhere else save in the Sonnets, I cannot but be 
struck with the fact that it is in the two greatest of all poets that 
we find this subject treated with the greatest intensity of feeling. 
The marvel, however, is this, that whereas the love of Achilles 
for Patroclus depicted by the Greek poet is purely English, 
absolutely without taint or alloy of any kind, the love of the 
English poet for Mr. W. H. was, though only for a short time, 
more Greek than English. I cannot explain this." 

No, I may add, nor is any orthodox Shakespearian 
ever hkely to explain it. William Shakespeare was 
most distinctly not the kind of man for a scandal of this 
nature, nor is there the slightest trace of such a stain 
in his whole life. He had his scandals too, but they 
were very different ones. Take his early Stratford days 
— we all know how he cropped his own sweet rose before 
the hour. It is down in black and white against him 
in the contemporary registers of the diocese of Worcester 
— that is one scandal. Take his London actor-mxanager 
days — we know pretty well how he showed a citizen's 
wife that William the Conqueror was before Richard IIL ; 
that too has been current in black and white from an 
early period and seems founded on good oral tradition. 
That is another scandal, but not the kind we have to 
do with here — nay, it almost excludes it, for Shakespeare's 
breaches of the moral law were distinctly virile, and, 
moreover, he was the father of twins begotten in lawful 
wedlock before he was twenty-one — so there was not 
much sexual inversion about him. We cannot marry 
anv facts, or even fictions of his life, to the scandals of 



WHICH OF THE TWO? 35 

the Sonnets. But how about Bacon ? What do the 
Baconians — the heretics — tell us about him with regard 
to this particular matter ? Nothing, apparently. Either 
they know nothing, or else they are in a conspiracy of 
silence ; for I have seen nothing in print on the subject 
as yet. But as I have only recently entered on the field 
of controversy, I niay not have sufficiently examined 
their arguments or evidence. 

But we may surely begin by saying that at least 
a priori we have in Bacon a much more likely man for 
a moral scandal than in the country lad Shakespeare, 
who was brought up far away from the infectious atmos- 
phere of " Italianated " gallants, and who mixed with 
middle-class people of a much more unsophisticated 
character than were the libertines of a royal court, 
whether a French or English one. 

Bacon had early experience of court life abroad, and 
was thrown into the company of aristocrats who had 
widely travelled and knew the vices of the Continent at 
any rate, even if they did not practise them. And if we 
put aside the grosser forms of vice as improbable, and 
reduce the scandal to an intense Platonic friendship for 
a beautiful youth, still Bacon is much the more likely 
man for this too than Shakespeare. For since the Greek 
teachers and scholars came to Italy after the fall of 
Constantinople, there had been a great revival, almost 
a re-birth, of Greek literature in that sunny land, and 
a kind of Platonism established itself in literature and 
in the higher culture of men, whereby the Greek view 
of an intense innocent male friendship was fostered and 
became indeed fashionable and praiseworthy among 
the cultivated upper classes, and Englishmen who 
travelled in Italy, or consorted with men who had spent 
some time abroad, would be likely enough to catch this 
fashion or folly of the time, and would either seek or 
imagine some " master-mistress " for their passion. 

Bacon, I maintain, was a much more likely individual 
to catch this infection than was Shakespeare. But 
however that may be, I feel it is only right that I should 



36 THE SCANDAL: EXTERNAL EVIDENCE 

produce in open court all such scandal-evidence regarding 
Bacon as I have found in the course of my comparatively- 
short search. 

I will begin by calling m}^ principal witness, who is 
no other than good old Aubrey, whose appearance in 
the witness-box should be greeted with delight and 
respect by all lovers of biographical research. If ever 
a man devoted time and trouble to gathering useful 
and accurate details of the lives of famous Englishmen 
of his own age and of the near preceding ones, it was 
John Aubrey. He has recovered and preserved for us 
many valuable literary assets which are now in our 
possession for ever, and we have to thank him for many 
precious records of Milton, Waller, and scores of other 
famous and interesting Englishmen, which would have 
been utterly lost but for his conscientious and pains- 
taking notes, which he put down in those MS. volumes 
now preserved in the Bodleian. He is a most valuable 
witness in this case, as indeed he is in all cases of con- 
temporary biography, for we know his antecedents, 
and we know how he used to obtain his evidence. He 
was a man of good position in society, with numerous 
friends and correspondents, and was a most persistent 
questioner and seeker-out of those who had personally 
known any of the worthies whose lives and peculiar 
characteristics he wished to record in his great MS. col- 
lections. He dined out, and had frequent social inter- 
course with cultivated men of the higher classes, and any 
scraps of their conversation, any anecdotes they might 
personally relate, would be carefully and honestly trans- 
ferred to his note-books on his return home. This was 
a hobby of his and he rode it for many years. He may 
be called the Boswell of the seventeenth century, and 
he took, not merely one literary colossus, but many 
interesting celebrities into his anecdotal biography. 

What then does this valuable witness tell us about 
Bacon ? A new, astonishing, and for the present con- 
troversy, a most important fact. Aubrey says : " He 
was 7rathepaaT7}<i. His Ganimeds and favourites took 



A STARTLING WORD! 37 

bribes, but his lordship always gave judgment secundum 
cequum et homim.'" * The latter part of this statement 
is fully corroborated by evidence in other writers, but 
the first few words contain a most startling fact which 
I have not met with in any Life of Bacon. 

How is it that this serious allegation against the 
great Lord Chancellor is apparently unknown ? Perhaps 
it has been looked at by those who have happened to 
come across it as a scandalum magnatum which it would 
be unseemly to stir up or even to notice, on account 
of the high recognised position of Bacon in English 
literature and history. But I think the real reason is 
that until quite recent years (i8g8), it has really been 
unknown. It was in Aubrey's MSS. at the Bodleian, 
and had been there for many years ; but what lite- 
rary student in ten thousand would go through those 
intricate jottings, those erasures and alterations, or 
that complicated patchwork of many memoranda spread 
here and there in the folio pages ? Besides, they had 
been already edited and presented to the public, and 
most students had read them in this printed form. I 
had done so, years ago, when I was only a general reader, 
in my college or salad days, and the astounding fact 
we are now dealing with was not there. It had been 
suppressed, along with much else that was thought too 
broad and unrefined for the age. 

But in 1898 a distinguished University scholar, re- 
cognising the importance of old Aubrey's gatherings, 
published a much larger (but still not quite unexpurgated) 
edition, and on re-rer,ding my delightful old friend, I 
came upon Bacon in a character hitherto totally un- 
suspected by me. 

But is this (XTra^ Xeyo/jievov of Aubrey to be 
accepted as a probably correct statement, or as simply 
a piece of vulgar gossip without real foundation ? Is 
there any corroboration in Bacon's life or works for 
such an astounding assertion ? I am sorry to say there 
is ; and, aU things considered, the amount of corrobora- 

* Aubrey's Brief Lives, edited by A. Clark, i. 71. Oxford, 1898. 



38 THE SCANDAL: EXTERNAL EVIDENCE 

tion is larger than might be expected, for such matters 
are always most carefully covered under the veil of 
secrecy by all persons in any way connected with them. 

If it be objected, that such a charge is ridiculous, 
that it has not a leg to stand upon, and that there is 
not a single legal or official document or record of any- 
thing of the kind connected with Bacon, I would ask 
these objectors to hear what Bacon himself has to say 
about the treatment of high official records by those 
who had power over them. He says in his History of 
King Henry VII. (Works, Spedding, vi. 38) that " soon 
after this king ascended the throne, all the documents 
which tended to taint him were defaced, cancelled, and 
taken off the file." May we not well imagine that Lord 
Chancellor Bacon, who enjoyed the friendship and 
confidence of James L (who also had his Ganymedes), 
would be able with little difficulty to take off the official 
files any documents connected with any charge or base 
attack upon himself, especially if it had been an abortive 
one, as the words " hunting on an old scent " would 
seem to imply ? 

In spite of the many high qualities of Bacon, both 
in intellect, and as I believe in character as well, he was 
obliged at times by the exigencies of his social and political 
position to adopt a Machiavellian policy which hardly 
received indorsement either from his intellect or from 
his conscience. He was most skilful in suppressing that 
which he wished to conceal, and he had considerable 
practice at this work all his life. He had a great deal 
to do with the Masques at Gray's Inn, and the Devices 
for the Earl of Essex ; we may say, in fact, that he was 
the prime mover, producer, and author of several pieces 
of this description, and yet his name is kept out of the 
business in a most marvellous manner. His contem- 
poraries {e.g. Rowland White and others) write full 
descriptions of these Devices and Masques in letters to 
their intimate friends, and do not so much as mention 
Bacon's name except on one occasion, where he is given 
the credit of getting up " the dumb shows " of a certain 



A GREAT FABRICATOR 39 

Masque. The Earl of Essex gets all the credit of his 
Device, and the inference universally was that he was 
the author of the libretto. But it was nothing of the 
kind ; it was Bacon who wrote the speeches, and perhaps 
we should never have known this for certain unless some 
rough drafts in Bacon's own writing had accidentally 
been preserved in the Gibson Papers, and the famous 
Northumberland MS. had revealed to us other pieces 
of Bacon's work. Bacon was one of the greatest literary 
fabricators (especially of letters for other men) and one 
of the greatest concealers and cancellers of his own 
literary work that perhaps ever existed, apart from 
professional impostors. He would fabricate "Apologies " 
with the greatest readiness, for this man or for that, 
or write letters in their name, either to them or from 
them, and imitate the style required admirably. He 
would suppress passages in important parts of his works, 
and add or cancel names as circumstances might require. 
I think many people quite forget this when they put 
aside Bacon as an impossible producer of the Shakespeare 
works. But enough has been brought forward here of 
the known peculiarities of Bacon's literary life, and his 
astuteness therein, to show that, combining these with 
his official position as Lord Chancellor, it would be no 
difficult matter for him to cancel and conceal from 
posterity every atom of official evidence concerning 
this scandal which had ever existed, for such documents 
would be very few in number, and would be in " archives," 
not in printed books. But enough about this possible 
objection. 

There is indirect evidence in plenty, and before dealing 
with that, it will be '^s well to get a clearer view of the 
true nature of the charge contained in Aubrey's Greek 
word iraiBepaa-TT]^. In the first place, the charge is not 
so bad as it sounds to the classical ear. The Elizabethans 
were not ancient Greeks, not even the most Italianated 
of them ; there were no gymnasia and no gymnosophists 
in Elizabethan England ; the cultus of the nude was 
not in evidence in those days, as it was when Pheidias 



40 THE SCANDAL: EXTERNAL EVIDENCE 

gave supreme expression to the human form divine, and 
when Grecian generals took their favourite minions with 
them in their campaigns. Our northern chmate was 
different ; our institutions and habits were different ; 
the whole entourage was different, and excluded the special 
signification of Aubrey's word or at least considerably 
modified it. 

I take the charge against Bacon to mean something 
much less repulsive than the Greek vice and something 
infinitely more pardonable, and we shall find, I think, 
that this more lenient interpretation of the scandal is to 
some extent borne out by certain well-authenticated but 
rather mysterious circumstances of Bacon's public life. 
We shall find that it is very especially corroborated in 
numerous allusions in the Sonnets and also in the other 
works usually attributed to Shakespeare ; but in the 
plays not so pointedly or frequently as in those private 
" sugred " poems, which were certainly never meant for 
public or general perusal but for his special " friends " 
alone. 

What the secret scandal really was will be best seen 
as evolved in the course of the evidence. 

I. The hidden scandal in Bacon's life. 

It is admitted in limine that there is absolutely no 
judicial or official record of any prosecution of Bacon 
on such or similar charge at any period of his life. x'Vnd 
it must also be admitted that if such a charge had found 
its way to official record in am/ inferior, or, for the matter 
of that, superior court, no one would have been in a 
better position to erase or annul the record than Lord 
Chancellor Bacon. And now for the evidence we possess. 

Just before the 29th April 1601, there was a most 
unseemly squabble between the Attorney-General Coke 
and Bacon, " publicly in the Exchequer the first day of 
term," in which Coke abused Bacon most violently and 
persistently. The abuse had its origin in Bacon raising 
some legal point as to the re-seizure of the lands of George 
Moore, a relapsed recusant, and showing " better matter 
for the Queen against the discharge by plea." This 



TWO LETTERS TO CECIL 41 

roused Coke, who was, as a rule, overbearing and insolent 
to the juniors, and he bade Bacon not to meddle with 
the Queen's business, but to mind his own. Bacon gave 
a kind of tu quoque reply, and then Coke burst out again 
worse than before, and according to Bacon's letter of 
complaint to his cousin Mr. Secretary Cecil, Coke went 
on to say : " It were good to clap a capias utlegatum upon 
my back ! To which I only said he could not ; and that 
he was at fault, for he hunted upon an old scent. He 
gave me a number of disgraceful words besides, which 
I answered with silence, and showing that I was not 
moved with them." Dr. x\bbott {Life of Bacon, p. 91) 
says that the threat of capias utlegatum no doubt refers 
to Bacon's arrest for debt in September 1598. But I 
rather question this. It seems to be some scandalous 
charge that is referred to, some felony or charge to which 
Bacon did not appear personally when called to answer 
it, and so incurred the penalties of an outlaw. It is clear 
that Coke's abuse was most virulent, for the letter says 
that his words and tone were " with that insulting which 
cannot be expressed." 

Bacon also reminds Cecil in this same letter (April 
iGoi) that he was using boldness in addressing him on 
such a subject, because he had before experienced his 
cousin's willingness to stand up for him jealously when 
wronged. " I am bold now," Bacon writes, " to possess 
your Honour, as one that ever I found careful of my 
advancement and yet more jealous of my wrongs, with 
the truth of that which passed, deferring my farther 
request until I may attend your Honour." 

And earlier in 1598, when Bacon was in trouble on 
account of being arrested for debt, he had also written 
to his cousin Cecil, asking him to help in repelling the 
indignity offered to him by arrest while on her Majesty's 
service, and says further : " How sensitive you are of 
wrongs offered to your blood in my particular, I have 
had not long since experience." 

I suggest that with these letters before us, it seems 
highly probable that Cecil had protected his cousin 



42 THE SCANDAL: EXTERNAL EVIDENCE 

Francis Bacon some time previously, when some un- 
pleasant and probably disgraceful charge had been either 
brought against him or threatened — a charge that would 
tarnish the fame or throw disgrace in a smaller degree 
on his blood relations and home circle. Still further, 
we can date this odium or charge as " not long " before 
1598, the date of his reference to it in his letter to Cecil. 
This would bring us to the years 1596-7 as a possible 
limit for the time of the scandal, and this date agrees 
remarkably well with the allusions in the Sonnets. 

As far as I can make out the old legal term capias 
utlegaium* it appears to have to do with either treason 
or felony, and the suggestion that the Attorney-General 
Coke, who was Bacon's lifelong enemy, referred mainly 
to the arrest for debt in 1598, seems to me wholly un- 
tenable. What was there so very disgraceful in this 
arrest ? How could this charge of itself be so terribly 
insulting ? Besides, it appears that Bacon had purged 
himself from that charge, nor was this an " old scent." 
Neither could it be treason that Coke referred to ; for 
if the Essex case looked bad for Bacon, and the play of 
Richard II., which Bacon seemed to fear that some busy- 
bodies would father on him as " one of his own tales," 
looked still more treasonable, yet these things had only 
just occurred, and reference to them could hardly be 
called " hunting on an old scent " ; so I cannot but come 
to the conclusion that this scandal, which Coke raised 
so brutally and violently (as was his wont at times of 
passion) against his rival, and which Bacon received for 
the most part in silence, had reference to some charge 
or information laid against Bacon's moral character, 

* As far as the old law-books and dictionaries help us, we find that the 
Latin words used by Coke referred to what in plain English would be a 
" Writ of Outlawry," which was thus defined : " When an indictment has been 
found in any Court of o^/er and terminer, or general or quarter sessions, against 
a person, and that when a justice of the peace, being applied to, shall issue a 
warrant for his apprehension, then if he shall keep away or cannot be found, 
he is liable to be outlawed, and if the charge be treason or felony the writ 
would be capias utlci^atum ; but if the charge were only for misdemeanours 
of less gravity, the writ would be venire facias P 



^OSCITUR A SOCIIS 43 

and was most likely to have had its origin in his great 
familiarity and friendship with youthful persons of 
his own sex. Nothing raises suspicion among the 
foul-minded vulgar more easily than such a companion- 
ship as this, which they, with their low ideas, can 
only interpret in one way. I believe that Bacon was 
innocent of such a charge, supposing it to have been 
made, and that Coke in his temper made himself the 
mouthpiece of mere vulgar report, or at most a mis- 
taken suspicion arising therefrom. Young Francis 
Bacon when at Gray's Inn and engaged in arranging 
plays and masques and interludes, was a very different 
person from the thoughtful philosopher of Gorhambury, 
who sat in his arm-chair and mused of Man's Power 
over the Elements of Nature. He associated with notorious 
libertines, and, as will be seen, was a bit of a libertine 
himself. He was the bosom friend of Southampton, and 
afterwards of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, both 
young men notorious for debauchery, and almost given 
up to the attractions of the theatres. Southampton, 
with whom most of the Sonnets, and all the early ones, 
are closely connected, was far the worse of the two. The 
Earl was the Adonis of his passionate admirer, and for 
him had been written Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, 
and in their dedications Bacon had enshrined his loved 
one's name while time should last. This I hope to show 
very clearly farther on. Bacon's character in earlier 
life and his then associates form the subject now. Well, 
another close friend and correspondent was Essex, a man 
who, whether married or a bachelor, was constantly 
angering Queen Elizabeth by his intrigues with her maids 
of honour, not simply with one love-lorn virgin of that 
vestal band, but with four or five. Bacon's cousins, 
the two Russell girls, were among the number, and their 
aunt. Lady Anne Bacon, Francis Bacon's mother, had 
to lay a formal complaint against Essex, of which he 
admitted part and promised amendment. 

Antonio Perez was another great friend of Bacon. 
He came over to England in the summer of 1593, or 



44 THE SCANDAL; EXTERNAL EVIDENCE 

perhaps earlier, and attached himself to Essex, mainly 
for political purposes. Essex supported him in London, 
and procured for him ;^I30 from the Queen, as a pension. 
Perez became very intimate with Francis and Anthony 
Bacon, and had now established himself for a time in 
Bacon's mansion near Twickenham Park. Bacon found 
food for his curiosity and ambition in the conversation 
of such an experienced diplomat as was Perez, and besides 
this, Perez was a very quick-witted, amusing, and, it 
must be added, a very licentious and dissipated man. 

Francis Bacon's mother, the Lady Anne, was naturally 
alarmed at such an intimacy, and wrote one day to her 
son Anthony : "I pity your brother ; yet so long as he 
pities not himself, but keepeth that bloody Perez, yea a 
coach companion, and bed companion, a proud, profane, 
costly fellow, whose being about him, I verily fear, the 
Lord God doth mislike, and doth less bless your brother 
in credit and otherwise in his health." * 

Lady Anne had some justification in speaking of 
" that bloody Perez," for he was suspected of the murder 
of Escovedo, and his illicit relations with ladies of title 
were notorious. He and the Princess of Eboli were once 
found by Escovedo, who was a kind of male duenna to 
the lady, en el estrado en cosas dcshonestas, and when 
Escovedo threatened to tell the king about it, the princess 
replied : " Escovedo, do so if you like, que mas quiero el 
trasero de Antonio Perez que al rey." Hardly the language 
one would expect from a " perfect lady," but it helps 
us to understand why Lady Anne, who was very strict 
and proper, and herself a grim duenna to the maids of 
honour her nieces the Russells, and others, did not think 
Antonio Perez quite the right person for her son Francis 
to be intimate with. 

Somewhat later on in May 1594, Lady Anne Bacon 
writes to her son Anthony, strongly condemning the 
dangers of London life. Anthony had located himself 
in Bishopsgate Street, and his mother disliked the 
neighbourhood very much. It was too near, she said, 

* Birch, Memoirs, i. 143. 



QUIS CUSTODIET ? 45 

to the Bull Inn, where plays and interludes were acted. 
The servants would be corrupted, religion would be 
neglected, and so on. Francis comes in for his share of 
his mo'ther's annoyance as well. In fact, the general 
impression to be derived from Lady Anne's correspond- 
ence is that both Francis and his almost inseparable 
brother Anthony were both somewhat given to a wild 
licentious life, frequenters and lovers of plays and masques, 
and boon companions of wealthy young bloods, whose 
room, in Lady Anne's opinion, would be far better than 
their company. We have hints too of trouble with the 
servants ; their conduct seems to have been by no means 
satisfactory to her ladyship at home, and she evidently 
thought that London and the neighbourhood of the 
theatres would neither improve their behaviour nor 
their morals. 

We have other evidence about Perez besides what 
comes from the puritan-minded Lady Anne. She might be 
suspected of prejudice against Perez as a Roman Catholic, 
and of jealousy on account of his influence over her two 
sons, but we are able to judge Perez out of his own mouth. 
There is a letter written by a Mr. Standen to Francis 
Bacon in March or April 1595, from which we learn the 
kind of post that was assigned to Perez — and a person 
more unfitted for such a delicate post would be hard to 
find. Mr. Standen writes : " It is resolved that Mr. Perez 
shall not depart, for that my Lord hath provided him 
here with the same office that eunuchs have in Turkey, 
which is to have the custody of the fairest dames ; so 
that he wills me to write, that for the bond he hath with 
my Lord, he cannot refuse that office." * About this f 
time he seems to have become very intimate with Lady ; 
Rich, who writes to Anthony Bacon (May 3, 1596) saying ': 
" she would fain hear what has become of his wandering f 
neighbour, Signor Perez." About a year before (March \ 
1595), Perez had written to Lady Rich the following 
rather impudent and braggart letter, at least we must 
so consider it when we remember his post : " Signor 

* Birch, vol. i. p. 229. 



46 THE SCANDAL: EXTERNAL EVIDENCE 

\\ Wilson hath given me news of the health of your Lady- 

ships, the three sisters and goddesses, as in particular that 
all three have amongst yourselves drunk and caroused 
unto Nature, in thankfulness of what you owe unto her, 
in that she gave you not those delicate shapes to keep 
them idle, but rather that you push forth unto us here 
^ many buds of those divine beauties. To these gardeners 

I wish all happiness for so good tillage of their grounds. 
Sweet ladies mine, many of these carouses ! O what 
a bower I have full of sweets of the like tillage and 
trimmage of gardens." 

This unabashed reprobate goes on to say that he 
has written a book full of such secrets as some persons 
would not like to have known, and he seems to hint 
that on his return to England these people must pay 
if they wish their names kept out of his book. So it 
seems he was a " black-mailer " in addition to his other 
odious qualities, and that the womanly instinct of Lady 
Anne had pierced through the veneer of the polished and 
travelled Perez, and had detected the baseness that was 
concealed under his clever and insinuating manners. 

Most certainly Perez was no fitting coach or bed 
companion for Francis Bacon, and I should say that the 
style of their free conversation was a little different from 
the style of the Instauratio Magna or the Novum Organum. 
I doubt whether Mr. Spedding, thorough expert on 
Bacon's style as he undoubtedly is, would have been 
able to identify it on these tete-a-teie occasions. May 
not this give us a hint why this same great authority so 
resolutely says that " whoever wrote the Plays of Shake- 
speare it was certainly not Bacon " ? 

This dictum of so great a Baconian expert is almost 
the greatest stumbling-block that lies in the way of the 
Baconian theory. For if Mr. Spedding cannot judge 
of Bacon's style, who is there that can ? But may not 
too much attention have been paid to the high philo- 
sophical and philanthropical style which Bacon chose 
in order to clothe his message to the world with due 
dignity, and too little heed to the faculty which Bacon 



THE GAY YOUNG COURTIER 47 

undoubtedly possessed and gloried in — the faculty of 
presenting feigned letters and compositions under other 
names than his own, and so working out his object under 
a mask or veil ? Look at the many letters he certainly 
wrote for Essex, and also some most probably for Pem- 
broke and others ; even for Lord Walsingham as early 
as 1590. In fact Bacon plumed himself on his skill in 
" invention," and as for our Plays, Sonnets, and Poems, 
why may not they be, after all, the hidden works of 
Bacon's " Invention " and " Recreation " ? We know of 
cases of " double personality " in the domain of psychical 
research — why may there not be double personality in 
the domain of literary style ? I only suggest a question, 
I do not press it, nor do I highly value the theory. 

The only reason I have dwelt on Perez' and Bacon's 
earlier associations at such a length, is because they are 
to a great extent passed over in the ordinary biographies 
of Bacon. Of his life for the ten or twelve years after his 
father's death (1580-1592) we really hear very little, 
even in the exhaustive collections of his best biographer 
Spedding, and the years between one's majority and the 
age of thirty-two or thirty-three are most important for 
character and prospects. Francis Bacon was in early and 
early-middle life more inclined to gay and fashionable 
society, and much more mixed up with the players and 
theatrical life than has ever been imagined, and was 
more in touch with the maids of honour and their Christmas 
amusements, their masques, their virginals, and their 
loves, than any of his biographers have given him credit 
for. At least so I hope to make it appear in the course 
of my argument. 

Thus far I only claim to have shown that in the 
recorded life of Bacon there was a hidden scandal which 
was more akin to the veiled scandal of the Sonnets than 
anything we know or could infer from what has been 
handed down to us about Shakespeare, their reputed 
author. Also that this same mysterious something with 
which Coke used to vilify Bacon, seems to corroborate what 
Aubrey has plainly stated ; and moreover, that Bacon's 



48 THE SCANDAL: EXTERNAL EVIDENCE 

early associates and surroundings, so distasteful to his puri- 
tanical mother, Lady Anne, point more to the authorship of 
the Plays and Sonnets than has previously been supposed. 

Next let us consider what the hidden scandal of the 
Sonnets appears to be, and whether it points to the 
authorship of Shakespeare or of Bacon. But before 
doing this, there is another piece of evidence to which I 
attach some importance, and it ought not to be omitted 
in the present connection. It concerns the unusual 
helplessness in which Bacon found himself with regard to 
authority over his male servants, and Spedding accepts it 
as probably a true history. " In the year 1655, a book- 
seller's boy heard some gentlemen talking in his master's 
shop ; one of them, a grey-headed man, was describing 
a scene which he had himself witnessed at Gorhambury. 
He had gone to see the Lord Chancellor on business, 
who received him in his study, and having occasion to 
go out, left him there for awhile alone. ' Whilst his 
Lordship was gone, there comes,' he said, ' into the study 
one of his Lordship's gentlemen, and opens my Lord's 
chest of drawers wherein his money was and takes it 
out in handfuls and fills both his pockets, and goes away 
without saying any word to me. He was no sooner gone 
when in comes a second gentleman, opens the same 
drawers, fills both his pockets with money, and goes 
away as the former did without speaking a word to me.' 
Bacon being told when he came back what had passed 
in his absence, merely ' shook his head, and all that he 
said was, ' Sir, I cannot help myself.' " * 

The relater of the tale commented on it in a curious 
and suggestive manner, for he thought that Bacon's 
manner was so strange when told of the thefts, that it 
struck him that Bacon's servants must have had some 
mysterious power over him, and that Lord Bacon had 
some fault ; whatever it was he could not tell. 

This Gorhambury anecdote would refer to a later period 
of Bacon's life than when the Sonnets were written, and 
would correspond more with the time of his life to which 

* Preface to " On The Cries of the Oppressed,^'' by M. Pitt in 1691. 



THE LETTERS OF LADY ANNE 49 

old Aubrey refers, i.e., when Bacon was in a high judicial 
position, and "his Ganimeds and favourites took bribes." 

But there are some letters written earlier than this, 
in April 1593, which appear very compromising for 
Francis Bacon, and have a worse appearance in regard 
to the scandal than his familiar acquaintance with Perez, 
which I have recently related from Birch's well-known 
Memoirs. They are original letters from Lady Anne 
Bacon to her son Anthony, and they complain very 
strongly of the behaviour of the male servants that 
Francis Bacon kept about him. " There was," she says, 
" that Jones, and Edney,* a filthy wasteful knave, and 
his Welshmen one after another." Until they came, the 
poor mother writes, " he (Francis) was a towardly young 
gentleman, and a son of much good hope in godliness." 
And she adds, " he hath nourished most sinful proud 
villains wilfully ; " and ends thus : " For I will not have 
his cormorant seducers and instruments of Satan to him 
committing foul sin by his countenance, to the displeasing 
of God and his godly true fear." 

Now this letter was written just about the time that 
Venus and Adonis was being given to the world, and 
supplies us with a good reason why Bacon should not 
care to have his name mixed up with it, even if it came 
from his fertile brain. He had to reckon with his mother, 
who was a lady of considerable force of character, and 
held both her sons somewhat in her power in money 
matters. The pecuniary difficulties of Francis were 
the original cause of these letters and the strong 
remarks contained in them. Francis wanted to pay his 
debts by selling an estate called Markes, that had been 
left to him, but he could not sell without the consent of 
his mother, who as dowager would have her widow's 
third. Anthony, who was always trying to help his 
brother, wrote an appeal to his mother to let Francis 
have power to sell the estate altogether, for the sake of 

* This name has always been deciphered as Enney ; so Spedding and the 
rest have it. I have replaced Edney from the MS. Lady Bacon seems to 
mean Idney, of whom I speak presently. 

D 



50 THE SCANDAL: EXTERNAL EVIDENCE 

his brother's health and peace of mind, which were both 
in a bad state just then. Lady Anne Bacon eventually 
consented, but there were more letters, which are given 
(in part) in Spedding,* They are worth reading entirely, 
and throw a strong light on the unwholesome and un- 
scrupulous kind of young servants by whom Bacon was 
surrounded — at least so his mother thought. It seems 
they were mainly Welshmen, and of a low class, for his 
mother writes, " He is robbed and spoiled wittingly by 
his base exalted men, which with Welsh wiles prey upon 
him." " That Jones never loved your brother . . . but 
your brother will be blind to his own hurt. . . . The Lord 
in his mercy remove them from him, and evil from you 
both." And again, she writes : " Oh that he had not 
procured his own early discredit, but had joined with 
God that hath bestowed on him good gifts of natural wit 
and understanding." 

These " base exalted " Welshmen remind me of the 
many Welsh characters in Shakespeare's plays, and the 
great credit critics have given him for the lifelike way 
in which the Stratford man reproduces the broken Welsh- 
English lingo, and the Welsh character. According to 
Lady Anne just now (1593) and earlier. Bacon had been 
living almost in an atmosphere of Welsh cunning and 
Welsh lingo, and was therefore quite qualified to give the 
speaking portraits of Captain Fluellen and Sir Hugh 
Evans we find in the Shakespeare plays. 

But there is stronger evidence still — evidence that 
almost proves Lady Anne right, when she said that 
Francis was " blind to his own hurt." It appears that 
Bacon used to sleep with one of his men-servants and 
take him out with him in his coach. This was defying 
public opinion indeed. This was almost asking the 
tongue of vulgar scandal to wag. The name of this 
servant was Percy, and it is to the laborious Spedding 
that we owe his name. Percy turns Perez out of Bacon's 
bed, and occupies the place himself. This is far worse 
than I have been supposing. I first read about Perez 

* Life and Letters of Bacon, i. 243-246. 



PERCY OR PEREZ? 51 

in Birch's Memoirs, and was surprised at Bacon's unusual 
intimacy with such a profligate character, and found an 
historical reason why Lady Anne should call him " bloody 
Perez." I noted these things down, and not long after 
I found that the conscientious Spedding had been to 
Lambeth and had read through all Lady Anne's let- 
ters in her own handwriting, and that he had found 
that Birch had wrongly deciphered Lady Bacon's rather 
difficult writing, and that the " bloody Perez " who was 
bed and coach companion to Francis, should really have 
been the " bloody Percy." As Spedding thinks, a Henry 
Percy, one of Francis Bacon's servants, was here meant. 
But why " bloody " ? That word suits Perez much better. 

However, in any case, whether Perez or Percy shared 
the bed, it caused Lady Anne to use very strong language, 
and evidently worried her very much. Of the two, Percy 
would cause the greater scandal, for Percy from his 
position in the household should certainly have had a 
room of his own ; whereas Perez as an occasional visitor 
and perhaps entertained unawares (though no angel) 
might well receive the hospitality of Bacon's own chamber. 

Dr. Abbott, dealing witli this matter of Lady Anne 
in his Bacon and Essex (p. 46), quotes " bloody Percy " 
as a " couch companion and bed companion." These 
variations induced me to go to Lambeth, and inspect 
for myself the original there carefully preserved. I found 
Lady Anne's writing extremely hard to decipher ; the 
paper she used was more like blotting paper, and her 
pens must have been very bad. But I found that she 
wrote " coch companion " ; there is no doubt of that, 
and as that was an early way of spelling the name of the 
vehicle, after the French fashion, I think couch may be dis- 
missed. The name Percy or Perez is much more dubious. 
I could only read it as Peerer, which rather favours the 
Spanish gentleman. " Bloody " also was a puritanical 
epithet for Papists, " Bloody Queen Mary " to wit. 

I have somewhat to remark on one paragraph of 
Lady Anne Bacon's letter as given by Spedding ; it is 
as follows (i. 244) : " It is most certain till first Enney (?), 



52 THE SCANDAL: EXTERNAL EVIDENCE 

a filthy wasteful knave, and his Welshmen one after 
another . . . did so lead him as in a train, he was a 
towardly young gentleman, and a son of much good 
hope in godliness." Mr. Spedding puts a note of inter- 
rogation after Enne3^'s name, either because he was 
uncertain whether it had been correctly deciphered, or 
because he knew no one connected with Bacon of that 
name. I read the doubtful word as Edney. I suggest 
that Edney may be a Mr. Idney, whom we hear of through 
Aubrey, who says, " Three of his Lordship's servants 
kept their coaches, and some kept race-horses ; " and in 
a side-note Aubrey adds that the three servants were 
" Sir Thomas Meautys, Mr. Thomas Bushell, and Mr. 
Idney." The first two are well known to Bacon's bio- 
graphers, but what became of the last I know not.* 

So far then, I think it must be generally admitted 
that we have a considerable amount of good and un- 
deniable external evidence that Bacon was given to 
unusual intimacy with loose and unprincipled people, 
some of whom were beneath him in position, and that 
he was also on terms of friendship with wild and licentious 
gallants of his own class. There is evidence that he 
gained discredit by such a manner of life with his mother, 
and no doubt with other strict-living people, and that 
he was once publicly discredited by his old enemy Coke 
on some old and disgraceful charge, possibly of this 
same character, or worse. 

The external evidence for a scandal in Bacon's life is 
stronger and clearer than is usual for a man so highly 
placed, and can hardly be dismissed. Next let us take 
the internal evidence for a similar scandal in the author 
of the Sonnets, which is also strong. 

* There was a William Edney connected with the Chapel Royal (1569- 
1581), and there was a Peter Edney, an excellent singer, who might, as far as 
chronology helps us, easily be his son. This Peter Edney receives much 
praise for his "grace and musical talent" from John Davies of Hereford. 
Bacon might well have taken him as a page, or in some other personal service, 
when he left his father and the Chapel Royal surroundings, which latter were 
not the best seminary for a graceful boy. Of course this is mere conjecture 
from the name alone ; but Edney is by no means a common name, and there 
may be something in the coincidence. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE SCANDAL : INTERNAL EVIDENCE 

To any reader who has the slightest acquaintance with 
those gems of Enghsh verse known as " Shakespeare's 
Sonnets," it is perfectly evident that the author, who- 
ever he may be, does pathetically confess and bewail 
some " blot," some " offence " or " guilt " of his, some 
" lameness," which metaphorically crippled his better 
nature (for mere physical lameness hardly seems to suit 
the different passages), some result in some way of his 
" sportive blood," which others with their " false adulte- 
rate eyes " had esteemed vile. Men's thoughts about 
the author's " frailties " are described as " rank thoughts," 
and altogether we may say that something unusual and 
unpleasant of a sexual character is clearly meant. The 
author gives us many other hints similar in character 
and phraseology to those quoted above in the inverted 
commas, and several Sonnets have more or less reference 
to this peculiar subject of scandal, but cxx. and cxxi. 
are perhaps the strongest. We must not, however, forget 
that even in these he defends his innocence, or partly 
leads us to infer it. Thus, the first four lines of Sonnet 
CXXI. certainly go far to make us think that the author's 
offence never went beyond intention, and the same remark 
applies elsewhere, as in Sonnet cix., where he excuses 
and accuses himself in this remarkable phraseology : 

" Never beleeve though in my nature raign'd 
All frailties that besiege all kindes of blood, *^ 

That it could so preposterouslie be stain'd 
To leave for nothing all thy summe of good ; 
For nothing this wide Universe I call. 
Save thou, nny Rose, in it thou art my all." 

Now preposterouslie is a significant adverb here, and 

S3 



54 THE SCANDAL: INTERNAL EVIDENCE 

there seems to be more in this word than meets the eye. 
We shall find it used in what is evidently a similar con- 
nection in Troilus and Cressida (Act V. sc. i.), and if we 
remember that this play is the very one which was sup- 
posed to be the " purge " that Shakespeare gave to Ben 
Jonson in return for his bitter attacks on the play- writers 
in the Poetaster, we shall understand the force of the 
word still better. For Ben Jonson had hinted pretty 
plainly that one, if not all of them, belonged to that 
disgraceful class of men whom the Romans called cincedi, 
as will be seen further on when I deal with Ben Jonson 
and Bacon, and the way in which Bacon is implicated in 
the charge as a young Alcibiades. The Shakespeare 
passage where the word now in question occurs is a 
dialogue between " rank Thersites," the universal vilifier, 
and Patroclus, the unsullied bosom friend of Achilles : 

Thersites. Pr'ythee be silent, boy, I profit not by thy talk ; thou 
art thought to be Achilles' male varlet. 

Patroclus. Male varlet, you rogue ! what's that ? 

Thersites. Why, his masculine whore. Now the rotten diseases 
of the south . . . take and take again s\ic\i preposterous discoveries. 

There can be no doubt about the application of the 
word here, and thus some light is, I think, thrown upon 
the meaning of the word in the Sonnet. 

Moreover, in Othello (I. iii. 330) we have this word 
preposterous again used in a similar connection ; lago 
says : 

" If the balance of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise 
another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would 
conduct us to most preposterous conclusions." 

And these words of the Sonnet were addressed to a 
young MAN, which makes them stranger still. " My 
Rose ! " it seems so very inappropriate. Indeed, Gerald 
Massey, who devoted so many years to these mysteries, will 
not believe that the Sonnet was to a man at all. He says, 
" The Rose is a female emblem," and that he should no 
more think of calling a man " my Rose," than of calling 
him "my tulip." 

The Sonnets which deal with the peculiar " bewailed 



MARY FITTON 55 

^uili " of the author seem to be xxxvl, ex., cxii., and 
cxviii.-cxxii., and any one carefully considering the 
repeated self-accusations they contain can have little 
doubt that these Sonnets are distinctly autobiographical. 
I know some good authorities have held the opinion that 
these Sonnets contain no key to the author's real life 
but are simply works of his poetic fancy, trials of imagina- 
tive skill, as was the usual habit with many, and indeed 
most of the Elizabethan sonneteers. This fashion in 
sonnets may be admitted as pretty general, but no writer 
has ever dwelt on his own abasement and infamy as it 
is exhibited here. 

There is just a possibility that the scandal was con- 
nected with Mary Fitton, for in Sonnet cxix., which 
is included in the criminating sequence, we have the 
suggestive lines : 

" How have mine eyes out of their spheres httn Jitted 
In the distraction of this madding fever ;" 

and the punning word " fitted," in connection with her 
name, is not without other examples — Fitton, fit one, &c., 
and especially Sonnet cli. : ,^^..^r^^^^ 

" flesh stays no farther reason, 
But rising at thy name, doth point out thee 
As his triumphant prize." 

And moreover, there certainly seems to have been some 
peculiar scandal about the Pembroke-Fitton case, apart 
from Pembroke, when we consider the abrupt departure 
of Mary and her father from town, and the fact of Pem- 
broke renouncing marriage for some reason not clearly 
stated. Bacon certainly knew Mary well, for did not she 
and his cousins the Russells act and dance together in 
masques at court, and private interludes before the 
Queen ? Moreover, we are told of this rather audacious 
young maid of honour that she would tuck up her clothes 
and put on a large cloak like a man, and go forth to meet 
her lover, William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. This 
kind of male-impersonation would commend itself strongly 
to a man of Bacon's temperament, as Aubrey would have 



S6 THE SCANDAL: INTERNAL EVIDENCE 

it to be. She would be like the charming Rosalinds and 
other maidens in doublet and hose which meet us in the 
pages of the immortal plays. I admit much of this is 
mainly fanciful, but I also submit that it is most curious 
and suggestive if taken in connection with Aubrey's most 
positive statement. Anyhow, I will assert with some 
degree of confidence that Francis Bacon was a much more 
likely man to sit by Mary Fitton when she was playing 
the virginals, and to " envy those jacks that nimble leap 
to kiss the tender inward of her hand," and then after- 
wards write Sonnet cxxviii. as a record of the sweet 
experience — a much more likely man, I say, than was 
William Shakespeare. 

There is an atmosphere of aristocratic life and refine- 
ment about the Sonnets, in which I think the Warwick- 
shire rustic would breathe with difficulty. This view 
of the case is also helped by that expression of Sonnet 
cxxv., " Hence thou suborned Informer,^'' where In- 
former is meant to be a significant word, being one of the 
few words put in italics in the original edition of the 
Sonnets, and implying a hidden reference for those who 
knew. I take the Informer to be Sir William Knollys, 
who appeared in the Essex trial in that thankless char- 
acter, and may possibly have informed against Bacon 
and Mary Fitton as well. He was a lover of the wanton 
maid himself, and would keep a jealous look-out on her 
doings, and an effective one too, as he was, so to speak, 
on the spot, and could get to her by the " postern door," 

as is well known he did one night, with his a e * in his 

hand. But that is another story. All I want to show 
here is, that the secret scandal of the Sonnets points 
much more to Bacon as the real author of these strange 
confessions than to Shakespeare. 

And if we consider the Poems, and especially the 
Venus and Adonis, and that bashful smooth-faced boy 
therein depicted with all a lover's fervour, what are we 
to think ? Must we not feel how Adonis recalls the 

* What this was will appear further on. I leave it for the present for the 
reader's skill in guessing. I do not think any one will succeed. 



ADONIS IN THE SONNETS 57 

Southampton of the Sonnets, and is his very " counter- 
feit," our author's " lovely boy " ? Do we not see how 
Adonis, with his half-girlish coyness and tempting inex- 
perience, as yet unassailed, represents, in a way, the 
" master-mistress " of the author's passion, who was to 
live in eternal lines in these very poems ? For the 
Sonnets were a private message, for private friends, not 
for the world of fame. They were, at least some of them, 
of the nature of a secret embassy accompanying or 
preceding the powerful rhymes that were openly to give 
life and fame to the " lovely boy " whose name was on 
the dedication page : 

" So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, 
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." 

Have we not here, in the Poems as well as in the Sonnets, 
Bacon 7raiSepacrTJ]<; — Bacon a born lover of youthful 
semi-feminine beauty, rather than Shakespeare, a virile 
married man and the father of twins ? 

Of course, as the poem of Venus and Adonis was to 
be open to the eyes of the public, not a word of scandal 
or male-love do we hear ; but the tendency is but half- 
concealed when we read in impassioned lines how fair the 
young Adonis was. 

In the Plays the tendency would be more concealed 
still, for they would be acted in public as well as read in 
the pirated quartos, and allusions were always keenly 
looked for by the observant Elizabethan audience. The 
Plays, too, were historical more than autobiographical. 

But there are indications now and then, if only slight 
ones. Take this from Hamlet : 

" So oft it chances in particular men 
That for some vicious mole of nature in them, 
As in their birth — wherein they are not guilty — 
Since nature cannot choose his origin . . . 
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect, 
Being nature's livery, or fortune's star — 
Their virtues . . . 

Shall in the general censure take corruption 
From that particular fault." 

— Hamlet, Act I. sc. iv. I. 30. 



58 THE SCANDAL: INTERNAL EVIDENCE 

And Biron (who represents in so many ways the author) 
says : 

" For every man with his afifects is born, 
Not by might mastered, but by special grace." 

— Loves Labour's Lost, Act I. sc. i. 

And what is still more remarkable, we find that the 
admirable lines just quoted from Hamlet were all struck 
out from the last revision of the Plays in the folio of 1623. 
Did the editor of the folio (Ben Jonson ?) do this to 
prevent any inference being drawn against the true 
author ? or did Bacon and Ben Jonson jointly withdraw 
the passage, fine as it was, on the well-known principle 
of " the least said, the soonest mended " ? We must not 
forget that there was another possible reason for the 
omission of this passage, and that is, that the Sonnets 
had been given to the public since the quarto Hamlet 
was printed, and they might raise suspicions in people's 
minds, for in the Sonnets there were allusions to " For- 
tune's spite " and " Nature's defect," and people might 
put two and two together. 

And there are several suggestive passages in that 
little-read poem A Lover's Complaint, hy William Shake- 
speare, printed at the end of the original edition of the 
Sonnets in 1609. It is a poem allied to Lucrece in metre 
and some other points, and allied to Bacon in its law 
terms and similes. Here are two stanzas : 

" Nor gives it satisfaction to our blood, 
That wee must curbe it uppon others proofe, 
To be forbod the sweets that seemes so good. 
For feare of harmes that preach in our behoofe ; 
O appetite from judgement stand aloofe. 
The one a pallate hath that needs will taste. 
Though reason weepe and cry it is thy last." 

\ " All my offences that abroad you see 

' Are errors of the blood, none of the mind : 

! Love made them not, with acture they may be, 

' Where neither Party is nor trew nor kind ; 

They sought their shame that so their shame did find. 
And so much lesse of shame in me remaines, 
By how much of me their reproch containes." 



YORICK AND TARLTON 59 

I am half-ashamed to say that I have only just read 
this poem for the first time. It seems to be written in a 
lofty Shakespearian vein, abounding in imagination and 
exquisite phrasing. Stanzas xii.-xxi. would suit young 
William Herbert very well, but the maiden seems more 
chaste and reserved than the volatile Mary Fitton had 
the reputation of being at the time. 

MT; W ^C. Hazlitt has lately (1902) written a volume 
entitled STiakespear, with a view to improve upon the 
famous Life of Shakespeare by Sidney Lee. Mr. Hazlitt's 
knowledge of curious and out-of-the-way Elizabethan 
literature is unrivalled, and I bought the book at once, 
expecting a flood of light on an undoubtedly obscure 
subject, and possibly a clearing up of the Sonnet-scandal 
question. I must say I was much disappointed. I will 
give an instance or two. Mr. Hazlitt takes Yorick to 
be Richard Tarlton, the popular jester and low-comedian. 
Very likely that is so ; I had already deduced an argu- 
ment from the same supposition in the present book. 
But, being an orthodox believer, he has to bring " Shake- 
spear," as he calls him, on the scene somewhere with 
Tarlton, for the jester had borne Hamlet " on his back 
a thousand times." What does Mr. Hazlitt do ? He 
invents a journey to London of the boy Shakespeare 
when of the age of ten ! These are his words : "I con- 
ceive myself perfectly justified in inferring that the 
original introduction of the poet to London took place 
about 1574, when he was a boy of ten " (p. 21). Be it 
remembered there is not a scrap of evidence to corroborate 
this assertion. This was disappointing, to say the least 
of it. But worse follows. He takes it for granted 
absolutely, that " Shakespear receives a magnificent 
eulogy from Jonson in the Poetaster, 1602 " (p. 235). 
To give a bare ipse dixi on a much-discussed question 
is hardly the way to throw light upon it. 

But my purpose here is not to criticise that which 
disappoints me in this recent book, but rather to quote 
some remarks connected with the " scandal " which I 
thoroughly endorse. He is discussing (p. ^^) whether 



6o THE SCANDAL: INTERNAL EVIDENCE 

we are justified in " constructing an autobiography from 
detached passages of the works." Looking at such char- 
acters as Hamlet and the melancholy Jaques, not to 
speak of others, he thinks we are justified in a degree. 
He quotes the very words of Hamlet that I have just 
quoted, and adds : " The question is, is it not a personal 
touch ? There are other very similar allusions scattered 
about, and the insistence is too frequent, too explicit, 
and even too inconsequent, where it immediatelv offers 
itself, to permit more than a single conclusion. . . . Scores 
of them (such passages) might be lifted out of their places 
in the text, and printed in sequence ; and they would tell 
one story — that of a magnificent career smitten by a 
blight." This is a novel and remarkable admission to 
come from an eminently orthodox Shakespearian, espe- 
cially one who denies the autobiographical nature of the 
Sonnets. It sounds inconsistent from him, but I take 
it per se as a very judicious piece of criticism, but applied, 
alas, to the wrong man. It was Bacon who had the 
" magnificent career " and the " blight," not Shakespeare. 

I will also quote what Mr. Hazlitt says just before 
this : " The author of Venus and Adonis, who we should 
not forget lived so long and so constantly, as we should 
now colloquially say, en gargon, was what the Goddess 
of Love would, according to him, have desired the object 
of her passion to be. Who shall say he never proved 
a Tarquin to some unchronicled Lucrece ? It was the 
opulent and voluptuous property of his blood — a per- 
petual spring of wami and deep emotions — which accom- 
plished for us all the nobler and purer things that we 
so cherish, yet that was chargeable, too, with certain 
infirmities of our strange composite nature." 

I am not quite sure what infirmities of our nature 
Mr. Hazlitt refers to, and of course when he and I speak 
of the author of Venus and Adonis we are referring to 
very different people ; but I certainly do not see much 
evidence that my author of Venus and Adonis, although 
he also lived so long en gargon in the midst of a plea- 
sure-loving set, ever showed in his earlier years much 



NO ACTRESSES ON THE STAGE 6i 

" infirmity of nature " in his relations with the fair sex. 
He and his friends were undoubtedly fond of going to 
the playhouses, but they would not be drawn to the 
fair sex by any personages they might see on the stage. 
The modern provocatives were not there. When Bacon 
went to the Bankside or to Blackfriars he saw no ballet- 
dancers, nor 3^et any " leading ladies " or fascinating 
souhrettes. If he took a fancy to wait at the stage-door 
or exit after the performance, he would never have the 
pleasure of praising an actress for her attractions and 
graces ; for the very good reason there were no actresses 
to meet. The only semblance of a petticoat likely to 
flutter the hearts of the jeunesse dorec of those days, at 
the stage-door or on the boards, was bound to belong 
to a lively boy or to a beardless effeminate-looking youth. 
At some theatres there were only boy-actors — these and 
nothing more — nests of little half-fledged " eyases," as 
they are called in Hamlet. 

We must take all this into consideration when ven- 
turing to pronounce an opinion on the scandal of the 
Sonnets, and we must not forget that the poet passed 
the greater part of his middle life in London, in the very 
centre of the temptations of the age. 

There is a puritanical pamphlet of date 1569, entitled 
The Children of the Chapel Stript and Whipt. We have 
here perhaps the earliest mention of the boy-actors or 
young singing men of the Chapel Royal : " Plaies will 
never be supprest, while her majesties unfledged minions 
flaunt it in silkes and sattens." Again : " Even in her 
majesties chapel do these pretty upstart youthes profane 
the Lordes day by the lascivious writhing of their tender 
limbes, and the gorgeous decking of their apparell, in 
feigning bawdie fables gathered from the idolatrous 
heathen poets." 

I must say that " unfledged minions " carries a bad 
savour with it, although I know that the earlier meaning 
of the word minion was perfectly harmless. When the 
court circles had become Italianated the case was rather 
different. 



62 THE SCANDAL: INTERNAL EVIDENCE 

The Elizabethan stage was the forum of the people, 
and their daily newspaper as well. That has always to 
be kept in mind. Chettle's Kind-Hartes Dreame (1592), 
and Ben Jonson's Poetaster, both refer to the topical 
jests and personal allusions which were permitted on 
the stage, and enjoyed by the audience to such a degree 
that hardly any reputation was safe, whether aristocrat 
or plebeian. The mendacia famcB that Bacon refers to 
in his published letters, were possibly stage lies and 
scandals enjoyed and appreciated by the many-headed 
vulgar in the penny and twopenny divisions of the theatre. 
The victims had to wince and bear it, unless they had 
influence enough with the Star Chamber authorities, or 
with the official censors of the theatres, to suppress the 
libellous parts of the plays. And even then it could only 
be effectively done when the play was to be printed, 
when permission could be withheld. It was next to 
impossible to stop the ill-natured " gag " that could be 
introduced on " first nights," and other nights as well. 
We have a reference to this in Hamlet, where the boy- 
actors are referred to. We hear that many a man with 
a rapier, that is to say, a gentleman, was afraid of goose- 
quills, or the play-wrights, and was afraid to show him- 
self among the audience. {Hamlet, II. ii. 359.) 

With reference to the Sonnet-scandal, F. T. Palgrave 
says : * " We cannot understand how our great and 
gentle Shakespeare could have submitted himself to such 
passions ; we have hardly courage to think that he really 
endured them." Mr. Palgrave's own view seems to be 
that " excessive affection is one of the characteristics of 
great genius," and looks for Shakespeare's excuse in this 
direction. He also quotes the "" sublime language " of 
Plato's Phcedrus, where this same wondrous affection is 
described as "that possession and ecstasy with which 
the Muses seize on a plastic and pure soul, awakening 
it and hurrying it forth like a Bacchanal in the ways 
of song." 

* Songs and Sonnets by William Shakespeare, edited by Francis Turner 
Palgrave. London, 1865. 



BACON'S CHARACTER 63 

That young Francis Bacon can be satisfactorily cleared 
and whitewashed in this high Platonic way is a con- 
summation devoutly to be wished. 

Finally, if ever there was a false judgment on any 
man, Pope made it by the last adjective in his famous 
distich on Bacon : 

" If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shin'd ; 
The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind." 

No word could be less appropriate. One of the most 
distinguishing marks of this illustrious man was his 
philanthropy, in the Greek sense of the word, as he used 
and expressed it himself. As for meanness, he was too 
liberal, too fond of show, too careless of expense, for his 
own purse to bear it. 

But I must not dwell too long on such points, tempting 
as they are, for this book is not written either to white- 
wash Bacon's character, or to blacken it. However, I 
must here say that I hold him, in a certain sense, to be 
independent both of eulogy or blame. No man had a 
greater fall or bore it better, and it might be said of him, 
as Malcolm said of Cawdor : 

" Nothing in his life 
Became him like the leaving of it." 

As to his character, I accept Dr. Abbott's solution 
of this difficult problem. He undertook political life and 
conformed to the practices of courtiers, but he was not 
by nature or intellectual tastes fitted for it ; he knew it 
was an error, " that great error that led the rest," but he 
had to go through with it, and " hardened himself in 
order to subsist." He never forgot his real calling, the 
furtherance of the Kingdom of Man over Nature, and 
consequently could never be or feel a commonplace self- 
seeker. Dr. Abbott goes on to say : " With all his faults 
he is one who, the more he is studied, bewitches us into 
a reluctance to part from him as from an enemy. He 
has ' related to paper ' many of his worst defects ; but 
neither his formal works nor his most private letters 



64 THE SCANDAL: INTERNAL EVIDENCE 

convey more than a fraction of the singular charm with 
which his suavity of manner and gracious dignity fasci- 
nated his contemporaries, and riveted the affections of 
some whom it must have been hardest to deceive." Of 
course when Dr. Abbott refers thus to Bacon as com- 
mitting to paper " many of his worst defects," he does 
not refer to the Sonnets, as he does not include them 
among Bacon's writings ; and therefore we cannot have 
his weighty opinion on the scandals which are therein 
half-revealed and self-confessed. But he speaks of the 
" long cleansing week of five years' expiation," which he 
thinks " may have chastened his moral character and 
generated in him an increased affection for those few 
friends who remained faithful to him." In fact, during 
those last five years, Bacon was more his real self than 
at any other period of his life, and then we were enabled 
(at least so it seems to me) to see the true value and 
genuine ring of a lofty, noble, and intellectual nature. 
The virtue that was in him became more evident then, 
for, as he himself most wisely said, " Virtue is like pre- 
cious odours, most fragrant when incensed or crushed " ; 
and though he is no " professor " of religion either in his 
acknowledged works or in his active life, or in the Shake- 
speare Plays, still there is such a reverence for religion 
generally, and such an absence of bitterness and of the 
vulgar odium theologicum, that we feel, in spite of Lady 
Anne's complaints of his careless religious habits in his 
youth, that we have to deal with a nature thoughtful, 
serious, and self-searching — nay, sometimes, as in " the 
dark period," sceptical and pessimistic to a degree, but 
still a mind that was naturaliter pia ; and if Shakespeare 
is to be dethroned, the English-speaking world has no 
reason to be ashamed of the qualifications of the illus- 
trious man who will occupy that lofty seat. However 
he may have followed the promptings of his nature in 
the heyday of youth and of his sportive blood, he finished 
his course with admirable patience and composure, in 
apparent peace with God and man. If the unpleasant 
scandal really belongs to Bacon, it can only be, I should 



BACON'S CHARACTER 65 

think, in a very modified sense ; or if the infection of 
his nature really was stronger than we have reason to 
believe, we can still hopefully look to the judgment on 
it that the great psychological experts of the present day 
(the only thorough judges) are prepared to give ; and we 
know that they say such a man is to be pitied rather than 
condemned. 



CHAPTER V 

WAS THE AUTHOR OF THE SHAKESPEARE POEMS AND 
SONNETS A SCHOLAR ? 

But let us turn to a more pleasant subject. I have 
already expressed my opinion that the author of the 
Sonnets was an aristocrat by birth and feeling, and it 
can be shown, and has been often shown by numerous 
extracts from the Plays, that their author had in special 
a dislike to low, common people, and to vulgar tastes 
and habits. I do not think there is need to press this 
point. But there is another point much disputed, which 
requires to be settled definitely if possible, and that is : 

Was the author of the Plays and Poems a scholar ? 

Much depends on this, and I, for one, am much sur- 
prised that it has been so long in dispute ; it seems such 
a clear and certain matter. But we must hear both sides. 
First take the Shakespearians : they are not all agreed 
among themselves on this matter, but the majority of 
them assert that the author of the Plays was not a scholar, 
and was not well read in languages ancient or modem, 
but that he was a bom genius and picked up suiftcient 
general and special knowledge to be able to write the 
Plays, even such masterpieces as Hafnlet and King Lear, 
and The Tempest, by the force of his natural genius. 
His mind was a remarkably receptive one, they say ; he 
would easily get his law from his Stratford experience 
and his father's conversation, for the old gentleman was 
obstinately litigious. He would get his Spanish and 
Italian and French from the natives of those countries 
whom he chanced to meet at the inns and taverns and 
other public places of the metropolis. He would get 
his knowledge of Venice or of Denmark from sailors or 
travellers who had been there, and so on. He was no 

66 



SCHOLAR OR GENIUS? 67 

erudite scholar or linguist, but he had been to an excellent 
country grammar-school, and that fact, along with his 
receptivity of mind, and above all, his heaven-sent genius, 
would be quite sufficient to account for Shakespeare 
being the author of Hamlet, Othello, and the rest of the 
Plays and Poems, without being at all a great scholar or 
linguist. 

_Gerald Massey puts this view of the majority of Shake- 
spearians as strongly as any one, and as his Secret Drama 
of Shakespeare' s Sonnets (100 copies for subscribers only, 
1888) is a very uncommon book, I will reproduce his 
words here. " To suppose," he says, " that a college 
education and a profound acquaintance with the classics 
are necessary to the bringing forth of a Shakespeare is 
to miss the lesson of his life (the italics are his), the 
supreme lesson of all literature ; because in him it was 
triumphantly demonstrated once for all, that these are 
not necessities of the most real self-developing education ; 
that nature grows her geniuses like her game-birds and 
finer-flavoured wildfowl, by letting them forage for their 
own living, to find what they most need. It was learning 
in the school of life that was the best education for him, 
and in that school, as he says of Cardinal Wolsey — 

' From his cradle 
He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one.' 

Probably he had not many books to read ; but he was 
not made out of books. When Nature wants a new man 
it is not her way to make him out of old books. Books 
are too often used as the means of getting our thinking 
done for us. Shakespeare did his own. He could trans- 
mute, but his genius preferred to work on Nature, and 
drew his drama directly from the life." 

So the opinion of the majority is that the author of 
Shakespeare's Plays and Poems was not a bookish scholar 
at all, but a born genius. However, the Shakespeare 
party is not unanimous on this question. Many orthodox 
Shakespearians cannot get over the difficulty of the 
learning and linguistic acquirements, which seem to them 



68 PROOFS OF SCHOLARSHIP 

so evident throughout all that Shakespeare wrote ; so 
they hold the opposite view that Shakespeare was a 
bookish student, and say in addition " there is nothing to 
prove that Shakespeare did not read languages with as 
much ease as Bacon." * But the great drawback for 
these people is, that they can tell us nothing about Shake- 
speare's books, and nothing about his skill in languages ; 
they cannot refer us to one book of the bookish Shake- 
speare's library, nor can they show us a single line of his 
writing in any foreign language, and nothing but his own 
name in his own language ! 

Now, when we come to the Baconians, we find that 
on this question they are all in unity, and unity is strength 
as a rule. They say, with one accord, that the author 
of the Plays and Poems was a good scholar, an excellent 
linguist, especially in French (he having lived in France 
for some years), and a man of the highest intellectual 
ability and most deep philosophy, with an unparalleled 
vocabulary. The Baconians say this, and have said it 
for many years, and have backed up their assertions with 
an immense amount of illustration and lucid proof. I 
need hardly say that on this point I thoroughly agree 
with them, and am of the opinion that the intellectual 
acquirements of the author of the Plays, on almost any 
subject that comes before him, can hardly be estimated 
too highly. He touches nothing that he does not adorn 
with the elegant knowledge of an expert, a scholar, and 
a gentleman. The arguments and facts showing his well- 
nigh universal knowledge, as though he had taken all 
learning for his province, are numerous and powerful ; 
but I shall not adduce them here, for I wish to go over 
as little old ground as possible, on this much-debated 
question. But I will give two instances of the author's 
bookish scholarship which have not been hitherto much 
noticed, if at all, and these point strongly to the real 
authorship. 

The first turns on the subject of the " Gardens of 

* Cf. Is there any resemblance betweat Bacon and Shakspere ? p. 209. (An 
anonymous work.) 



THE GARDENS OF ADONIS \Y ^ 69 

Adonis." We jfind in i Henry VI., i. 6, the following 
lines : '^ 

" Thy promises are like Adonis' gardens, 
That one day bloomed and fruitful were the next." 

This allusion was so deep and scholarly that it puzzled 
even the learned Alexander Schmidt in his excellent 
Shakespeare Lexicon, where, s. v. Adonis, his comment 
is — " Perhaps confounded with the garden of King 
Alcinous in the Odyssey." And another Shakespearian 
scholar, Richard Grant White, says there is "no mention 
of any such garden in the classic writings of Greece and 
Rome known to scholars." But both these gentlemen 
stumbled over a comparatively easy obstacle. Liddell 
and Scott would have removed it from their path, if 
they had been consulted. Adonis' Gardens {01 MSaJftSo? 
KrjTroi) were quick-growing plants, seeds, or lierbs, put 
in pots for use at the annual festival of Adonis, and 
hence used proverbially for anything pretty, but fleeting 
and unreal. Plato makes Socrates refer to them in the 
Phcedvus (p. 276, Jowett). Milton, too, speaks of them : 

" Those gardens feigned, 
Or of revived Adonis or renowned 
Alcinous." — Paradise Lost, ix. 439. 

Here a passage in Pliny's Natural History seems to be 
the original source: "" Antiquitas nihil prius mirata est 
quam Hesperidum hortos, ac regum Adonidos et Alcinoi,^* 
i.e. the ancients admired no gardens more than those 
of the Hesperides and of the kings Adonis and Alcinous. 

From other references it is gathered that in the flower- 
pots of Adonis were placed seeds, cuttings of wheat, 
fennel, lettuce, &c., all quickly drawn up by heat and as 
quickly faded. They so became an emblem of the swift 
fading away of the life of mortals — " It cometh forth 
like a flower, and is cut down." Erasmus, in his well- 
known Adagia, has a long account of these gardens, with 
all the original Greek passages and a Latin translation 
following them.* 

* Erasmi Adagia, 1599, fol., p. 1047. 



70 PROOFS OF SCHOLARSHIP 

All the above goes clearly to show that the author 
of the play of Henry VI., when he fitly compared promises 
to the gardens of Adonis, was writing as a scholar would 
write who knew his Plato and Pliny, or at least knew 
his Erasmus. But from what we know of Shakespeare's 
education and opportunities, should we be inclined to 
give him the credit of such a neat and learned allusion ? 
I think not. How about Bacon, we next ask ; would 
he be likely to mention Adonis' gardens ? Why, certainly, 
a most likely man ; and he has mentioned them twice — 
once in his Promus* 806, where he took the thing from 
Erasmus, and once in his Lord Essex's Device before the 
Queen (1595), t where he speaks of " the gardens of love, 
wherein he now playeth himself, are fresh to-day and 
fading to-morrow." 

My other instance is taken from the last two Sonnets. 
They are outside the scope of the rest of the Sonnets, 
and have nothing to do with the " Lovely Boy," or the 
" Dark Lady." They are, as Mr. Wyndham rightly calls 
them, " exercises on a Renaissance convention." They 
seem to be early essays of the author's " pupil pen," for 
they both contain the same poetical fancy, but differently 
versified. They seem to me to be a very good proof 
that the author was a scholar, and I have taken them 
as my second instance of " scholarship," partly to correct 
a mistake that every later commentator on the Sonnets 
has made, even such thorough ones as Dowden and Tyler. 
They all say that Herr Hertzberg, in 1878, was the first 
to trace the original source of these Sonnets to a Greek 
Epigram of the Palatine Anthology. But I can say with 
confidence that I knew their origin in 1865 when I was 

* Strange to say, Mrs. Pott, who has so carefully and laboriously illus- 
trated Bacon's Promus by parallel passages from Shakespeare's Plays, has 
omitted to quote Henry VI. as above, although it is by far the most striking 
instance, and, as it seems to me, one of the best Baconian proofs that the 
Promus offers us. 

t Spedding, viii. 379 ; where the speeches written by Bacon for the several 
characters are given in full. We only know by internal evidence, and the 
fact of a chance copy with rough notes in Bacon's handwriting being found 
in the Gibson Papers, that Bacon was the author. All the contemporary 
references quite ignore Bacon, and give the credit to Essex. 



SONNETS FROM THE GREEK 71 

at College, and that other Englishmen knew it as early 
as 1849, so that it is rather a shame that the modem 
German Hertzberg should get all the credit. The truth 
of the matter is, that in 1849 Dr. Wellesley, the learned 
Principal of New Inn Hall, Oxford, published his Antho- 
logia Polyglotta, which was a choice selection of versions 
in different languages of some of the best Epigrams in 
the Greek Anthology. I bought a copy of this in 1865, 
which I have now, and I well remember my surprise to 
find on page 63 that William Shakespeare was down for 
a version of a very fine Epigram, in company with Grotius, 
Thomas Gray, Pagnini, and Herder, this being William 
Shakespeare's sole appearance in the 464 pages of learned 
versions which the book contained. What astonished 
me was to find Shakespeare among such an array of 
Greek scholars, for I knew even then what Ben Jonson 
had said of his Greek qualifications. A little farther on, 
at p. 133, I found " Lord Bacon " down for a version 
in company with Ausonius, Maittairi, Ronsard, and some 
old English authors of 1530-1550. This did not surprise 
me half so much, although it was my first inkling that 
Bacon was a poet. I knew he was a Trinity man and a 
thorough student, and therefore not absolutely unequal 
to tackling a Greek Epigram — but Shakespeare ! ! Well, 
it staggered me quite ; but I had other problems, more 
mathematical than literary, to study in those days, so 
I just found out in what part of Shakespeare's works 
this version from the Greek appeared, which, I remember, 
took me some time to discover (for Dr. Wellesley gave 
no reference, and I began to look in the Plays), and after 
that, for many years thought no more about it. But 
now it strikes me as a strong proof that the author of 
the Sonnets was " a scholar " in a higher sense than any 
one has ever claimed that title for Shakespeare. In fact, it 
strongly suggests to me that Shakespeare was not a likely 
person to edge himself in just once among such a learned 
crew, and that Bacon was a much more probable author, 
especially as he had tried another Greek Epigram, and had 
expanded it in a similar way to the one in question. 



72 PROOFS OF SCHOLARSHIP 

If necessary, a large number of proofs of scholarship 
and book-learning could be adduced from the Plays and 
Poems attributed to Shakespeare ; but I think it would 
only be useless repetition of what has been before in- 
quirers for many years. It is not, I think, too much 
to say that the author we seek was a profound student 
both of books and men, and one who set before him as 
his aim and object an almost universal scholarship. He 
was indeed a searcher after omne scihile. But we have 
no biographical hints that Shakespeare was a man of 
this stamp at all. 

Moreover, even if we leave out of all consideration 
the numerous identities and literary parallels which 
Mrs. Pott and Ignatius Donnelly have so laboriously 
piled up, having dug them out one by one from the rich 
mine of the Plays ; — if we reckon all these as mere sconce, 
as so much dross that has no marketable value with 
literary experts, even then there remains in the mine a 
rich asset in the shape of a most extensive and scholarly 
vocabulary, such as hardly any other mine ever possessed. 

Max Miiller, an authority surely of considerable weight, 
declares that " Shakespeare displayed a greater variety 
of expression than probably any writer in any language." 
He estimates Milton's vocabulary at 8000 words, Shake- 
speare's at 15,000 words ; nearly double ! 

Again, there is no proof that Shakespeare ever crossed 
the Channel, and he certainly had neither time nor oppor- 
tunity to become a polyglot student, or a scholar in 
living languages. He came up to London early in life 
as a " utility man " in connection with Burbage's stable- 
yard first, and his theatre afterwards, and if the elder 
Burbage had found his yomig fellow-townsman conning 
foreign dictionaries and grammars instead of doing his 
proper work — he would have had somewhat to say. 

That the author of the Shakespeare Plays was an 
Italian scholar has been shown by George Brandes. He 
finds imitations of Bemi's Orlando Innamorato and other 
Italian poems which must have been used in the original, 
but his most telling example is from Ariosto, who is used 



KNOWLEDGE OF ITALIAN AND FRENCH 73 

evidently when Othello, talking of the handkerchief, 
says : 

" A sibyl that had numbered in the world 
The sun to course two hundred compasses, 
In her prophetic ftcry sew'd the work." 

In Orlando Furioso (canto 46, stanza 80) we read : 

" Una donzella della terra d'llia 
Ch' avea il furor profetico congiunto 
Con studio di gran tempo, e con vigilia 
Lo fece di sua mano di tutto punto." 

The agreement here cannot possibly be accidental. 
And what makes it still more certain that Shakespeare 
had the Italian text before him, is that the words pro- 
phetic fury, which are the same in Othello as in the ItaUan, 
are not to be found in Harington's English translation, 
the only one then in existence. The author must thus, 
whilst writing Othello, have been interested in Orlando, 
and had Berni's and Ariosto's poems lying on his table.* 

There are several proofs that the author was a French 
scholar, but the two best are (i) The gravedigger's case 
in Hamlet about " crowner's quest " law, taken from the 
French of Plowden's Commentaries ; and (2) The play 
of Henry V., where one entire scene and parts of others 
are in French. But the French of Stratford-on-Avon 
was not likely to be much better than the French of 
Stratford-atte-Bowe. 

William Rawley, Bacon's first and last chaplain, and 
his literary executor, said of him : " I have often ob- 
served, and so have other men of great account, that if 
he (Bacon) had occasion to repeat another man's words 
after him, he had a use and faculty to dress them in 
better vestments and apparel than they had before : so 
that the author should find his own speech much amended, 
and yet the substance of it still retained." 

What is meant is that Francis Bacon was a most 
elegant and ornamental paraphraser of other men's 
phraseology, and certainly the marvellous alchemy by 

* G. Brandes, IF. Shakspeare, ii. 122. 



74 PROOFS OF SCHOLARSHIP 

which the baser metal of other men's thoughts and words 
was changed in the Shakespeare Plays to ever-shining 
and imperishable gold is without a parallel in literature. 
Was it Bacon or Shakespeare who did this ? 

If we, in this way, come somewhat to the same point 
of view as Emerson, and find ourselves unable to marry 
Shakespeare to his works, to whom are the works to be 
irrevocably joined ? Here we have not much power of 
selection, for there is absolutely but one competitor in 
the field. If Shakespeare should appear to us unequal 
to that intellectual task of the very highest order, which 
meets the eye and ear so vividly throughout his supposed 
works, then there is but one alternative — Bacon was the 
man ! He is the only one who at all suits the situation ; 
the only key that has the slightest pretence to fit the 
lock, and open the secret chamber. That this key does 
fit has been shown unanswerably again and again, on 
such points as " identities of expression," " parallel 
passages," and " similar mistakes " both in Bacon and 
in Shakespeare ; but the effect on the public has been 
most inadequate, for the reason that many of the 
Baconians who have brought so much incontrovertible 
evidence before the public have either mixed it up with 
some unintelligible or incredible cipher theory, or, as in 
the case of Mrs. Pott's edition of Bacon's Promus, have 
spoilt the whole effect by overdoing the illustrations, and 
piling together a heap of material for the most part 
irrelevant and worthless. 

I myself could add a few extra pieces of undesigned 
coincidence between Bacon and Shakespeare which I have 
come across quite casually, but they are not worth the 
trouble of writing down. Such evidence, if well chosen, 
is really forcible, but no one seems convinced by it, and 
every one evades it ; and if both writers are shown to 
make the same extraordinary mistakes, or the same 
recondite remarks, why then the common reply is : " Oh, 
that's nothing, no proof at aU ! one clearly copied from 
the other." Or else the argument is, if the Promus dis- 
covery be mentioned : " Oh, can't you see how it 



EVIDENCE FOR BACON 75 

happened ? Bacon went to hear Romeo and Jidiet, and 
jotted down his notes and reminders in his Promus when 
he got home." And so on. I do not say that my few 
pearls of coincidence are either fine or costly, but I would 
prefer them kept out of the mud, and not trampled on. 

But to return to direct Baconian evidence. Quite 
apart from literary and other identities, and similar 
phraseology — a kind of proof which, as I allow, can be 
much abused — we have abundant evidence left, whereby 
we can show, that if Shakespeare was not scholar enough, 
in spite of his transcendent genius, to write the Plays 
and Poems, there was undoubtedly a man fully equipped 
for the great work. That man was young Francis Bacon. 

I do not suppose that any one living in Bacon's time 
was able to give a truer account of the kind of man Bacon 
was than his lifelong friend. Sir Toby Matthews. For- 
tunately we have his account in A Collection of Letters 
made by S" Tohie Mathews, K' , which was edited by 
John Donne, son of Dr. Donne, in 1660. He is praising 
his native country for possessing such four excellent and 
rare minds as Cardinal Wolsey, Sir Thomas More, Sir 
Philip Sidney, and Sir Francis Bacon, and he thinks 
England can " pose any other Nation of Europe " in 
this respect. He reviews their great abilities, and coming 
to Bacon he says : " The fourth was a Creature of in- 
comparable Abilities of Mind, of a sharp and catching 
Apprehension, large and faithfull Memory, plentifull and 
sprouting Invention, deep and solid Judgment, for as 
much as might concern the understanding part. A man 
so rare in knowledge of so many severall kinds, endued 
with the facihty and felicity of expressing it all, in so 
elegant, significant, so abundant, and yet so choise and 
ravishing a way of words, of metaphors, and allusions, 
as, perhaps, the World hath not seen, since it was a 
World. I know, this may seem a great Hyperbole, and 
strange kind of riotous excesse of speech ; but the best 
means of putting me to shame, will be for you (the reader) 
to place any other man of yours, by this of mine." 

To feel the full force of such remarks as these, we 



76 EVIDENCE FOR BACON 

must remember that if any man at that time really knew 
jtae literary secret, it was assuredly Sir Toby. Bacon 
used to write to him and submit his compositions to 
his friend's criticism, which he valued highly. " I have 
sent you," Bacon tells Sir Toby in one letter, " some 
copies of my Book of the Advancement, which you desired, 
and a little Work of my Recreation, which you desired 
not." In another letter Bacon writes : " And I must 
confesse my desire to be that my Writings should not 
court the present time ; " and in another he confesses 
that a certain past " businesse " is not quite clear to his 
memory, and gives this reason — " my head being then 
wholly employed about Invention." 

Do not all these facts seem to point out the very man 
who could write the wonderful Plays ; the very kind of 
head to do the work and not to speak of it, but to leave 
its fame and good effects to a later time ? And as all 
who are interested in this literary problem well know, 
it was Sir Toby who, having received some favour or 
present from Francis Bacon about the time that the first 
folio was being brought out, wrote back that enigmatical 
reply, that the greatest wit he knew across the Channel 
was "of the same name as his Lordship, though he went 
by another." This used to be thought a Baconian proof, 
a gem of the first water, until some Shakespearian 
suggested that the greatest wit in question was Southwell 
the Jesuit, whose proper name was Bacon, and that the 
gem of the first water was in fact a worthless paste 
imitation. But what made Sir Toby mention such a 
circumstance at all — what led up to it ? I think the 
gem is really as valuable as ever, although I believe 
Southwell was the man referred to. For surely there 
must have been talk of some double authorship, or some 
author concealed by an alias, or we should not have had 
such a postscript at all. 

Having thus heard one good witness speak to the 
fitness of Bacon, let us hear, by way of contrast, one good 
witness bear evidence as to the unfitness of Shakespeare 
to fulfil such remarkable qualifications as are everywhere 



THE EVIDENCE OF DIALECT 77 

noticeable in the immortal works, especially in the early 
plays and poems, mostly written when Shakespeare h jv 
not long left the wilds of Warwickshire. 

A strong argument against Shakespeare's authorship 
can be drawn from " the first heir of " his " invention," 
the Venus and Adonis. He could not have left home 
very long when he began to write this successful and 
popular poem ; possibly he was ostler and odd-man at 
James Burbage's livery-stables at Smithfield when he 
thought out the first few lines. Surely, then, we may 
expect some Warwickshire expressions in it. Country 
dialect is not easily shaken off all at once. Now, a well- 
known American, Appleton Morgan, has devoted much 
labour to tabulating the Plays and Poems with a view 
to find the percentage of provincialisms (especially 
Warwick ones) in each. The dialect column for Venus 
and Adonis was absolutely blank ! not a single Warwick- 
shire word to be found in the poem, unless urchin for 
hedgehog could be counted, but urchin was common to 
many counties besides Warwick. And then, in spite of 
the risky subject of the love of Venus for the bashful 
youth, the whole poem is written with such an air of 
aristocratic grace, culture, and refinement, that could 
hardly be attributed to the young man William Shake- 
speare. He could hardly have seen much fashionable 
society or elegant court ladies yet. He was but an 
honest, facetious actor and stage factotum who had not 
written any popular poetry so far, nor had his name been 
at all in the mouths of men. 

He had been promoted, no doubt, very soon, as I 
hope to show, from the stable-yard of John Burbage to 
the inside of Burbage's theatre, and was working his way 
up, but he was not in a position to address Southampton 
or any other young nobleman as " my lovely boy," either 
in public or in private. 

Neither was he qualified (we believe) to read that 
voluminous and rather crabbed French writer, Saluste 
du Bartas, in his original language. But the celebrated 
picture of the horse in Venus and Adonis is borrowed 



78 A PARADOX EXPLAINED 

word for word from Du Bartas, that well-known French 
]^oet, afterwards in Milton's days so popular in Sylvester's 
translation. But there was no translation for more than 
five years after Venus and Adonis appeared ! 

Therefore the author must have read the work in its 
French original. Bacon could do this easily, as a perfect 
French scholar ; but whether the Stratford man could 
is very doubtful.* 

Some Shakespearians no doubt will argue that when 
we attempt to give the authorship of the sensuous Venus 
and Adonis to the philosophic and studious Bacon we are 
open to the very same objection that was so forcible 
against the Shakespearian authorship of Hamlet and Lear 
and Love' s Labour' s Lost — the objection, I mean, that " the 
man cannot be married to his muse," that his life and 
surroundings effectually forbid the banns. I admit the 
objection in Shakespeare's case but not in Bacon's. 
Bacon was a friend and close associate of Essex, South- 
ampton, Perez, and many others of the Elizabethan 
highest social grade — and that grade abounded with the 
wayward children of the Renaissance, who thoroughly 
accepted one of the principal new doctrines floating in 
that new atmosphere, the Rehabilitation of the Flesh. 
Neither Essex, nor Southampton nor Raleigh would 
hesitate one moment about seducing a maid of honour, 
or carrying on an intrigue with two or three ladies at the 
same time, if the chance occurred. The state of feeling 
in the high and cultured circles of renascent Italy in the 
preceding generation or two had its counterpart in the 
high and cultured circles of Elizabethan England, 
especially among those who had travelled beyond the 
boundaries of their island home and had seen many 
men, cities, and manners. 

A reversion to the unrestrained and joyous life 
of the natural man — as he was so finely depicted in 
pagan art and classic story — must have been evident 
to all travellers. The very pictures and statues, the 
glories of the new Italian art, told the tale to the eyes 

* Cf. Quarterly Review, April 1894. 



A PARADOX EXPLAINED 79 

in a livelier and more vivid manner than could ever reach 
the ears. 

Both the Bacon brothers were intimately connected 
with men of this class. Lady Anne Bacon often wrote to 
her sons warning them against the character and conduct 
of their aristocratic associates. She mentions in one letter 
" thy Earl's unchaste manner of life." This Earl was 
Essex, who had been a married man for years. Indeed 
the names of at least four ladies of the court were coupled 
with his in a rather compromising manner : (i) Elizabeth 
Southwell, who bore to him a son, described in a law paper 
at the S. P. O. as " Walter Devereux, the base reputed 
son of Robert, Earl of Essex, begotten on the body of 
Elizabeth Southwell " ; (2) Lady Mary Howard ; (3) 
Mistress Russell, who was Bacon's cousin ; and (4) the 
*' fairest Brydges." This last was a peculiarly dis- 
graceful amour, for Lady Essex, his wife, was with child 
at the time, and we hear in a letter, dated nth Feb. 1598, 
that " it is spied out by some that my Lord of Essex is 
again fallen in love with his fairest B. It cannot chuse 
but come to her Majesty's ears, and then he is undone." 
Apparently the intrigues did come to the Queen's ears, for 
her wrathful Majesty " treated her and Mistress Russell 
with words and blows of anger : they were put out 
of the Coffer Chamber and took refuge in Lady Stafford's 
house for three nights." However, they promised to be 
more careful and were restored to their former position. 
The excuse given for the royal displeasure was that 
these young damsels had neglected their duties, had 
taken physic, and had one day gone through the privy 
galleries to see the gentlemen play ballon. Lady 
Mary Howard's punishment was rather a spiteful piece 
of temper on the Queen's part, for Lady Mary had a 
velvet dress with a rich border, powdered with gold and 
pearl, which was probably intended, among other pur- 
poses, to help to captivate the fascinating Earl. Anyhow 
it roused the envy of the Queen and others. The Queen 
one day sent for this dress privately, put it on, and came 
out among the ladies, and being much taller than Lady 



8o THE QUEEN'S SPITE 

Mary, it was too short for the Queen, and was therefore 
quite unbecoming. The Queen went round asking the 
ladies whether it was not short and unbecoming, to which 
they agreed, and when the question came to be made by 
the Queen to the real owner of the dress, she too was 
forced to agree with what the others had said. " Why 
then," said the Queen, " if it become not me as being too 
short, I am minded it shall never become thee as being too 
fine, so it fitteth neither well." So the dress was put away 
and never worn till after the Queen's death. So the 
Queen effectually prevented that dress captivating the 
Earl. 






CHAPTER VI 

BEN JONSON AND BACON 

The next piece of evidence I shall bring forward is, to a 
great extent, new and unnoticed, but, if I may venture to 
say so, by no means unimportant. It has mainly to do 
with Ben Jonson and his early attitude towards Shake- 
speare and Bacon, especially during the " War of the 
Theatres," or the Poetomachia as it is sometimes called, 
which lasted two or three years from 1600 onwards. 

I am afraid the evidence cannot be fuUy appreciated 
without a careful reading of two or three of Ben Jonson's 
plays, right through from prologue to epilogue. This is 
rather too much to ask in these days, when writing is so 
often done ciine3tc. calamo, without stopping to think, 
and reading is so often got through currenfe oculo, by just 
glancing at the pages as we turn them over. 

However, after a few preliminary remarks I will 
endeavour to extract some of the more important allusions 
from their context, and thus save the hasty reader the 
trouble of reaching down another book from his shelves. 

A great deal depends on getting a proper appreciation 

of Ben Jonson's treatment of Shakespeare and Bacon — 

for he knew them both well, and also knew Pembroke 

more intimately than we have any reason to believe that 

Shakespeare did. In Ben's plays there are such evident 

satirical comments on actors having arms from Heralds' 

College and becoming " gentlemen bom," that we cannot 

avoid the conclusion that Ben Jonson is aiming at and 

satirising Shakespeare. And there are equally strong 

adverse allusions pointing against Bacon. I know that 

Gifford, and many critics more recent than he, would 

not allow either a word or a proof connected with Jonson's 

81 p 



82 BEN JONSON AND BACON 

rancour or malignity against Shakespeare. They were 
both sworn friends and boon companions all their lives, 
so that school of criticism declared. My own views may 
be gathered from the present chapter. 

It is difficult to give a short, yet clear, account of this 
War of the Theatres, which lasted quite four years {1598- 
1603), and involved in it Ben Jonson, Marston, Dekker, 
and in a certain less degree, Shakespeare and Bacon. 
But it is important to have a general idea of its course. 
It began, I believe, with Marston in 1598 or 1599, who 
was merciless in his Satires, and railed so universally that 
many libels might be accepted without being really in- 
tended. Jonson, however, thought Marston had attacked 
him for yoathful indulgence in the sports of Venus, and 
henceforth Jonson brought his enemies and slanderers, 
as he thought them, continually into his plays, which 
were full now of concealed personalities and bitter re- 
marks, Jonson himself figuring in them too in the various 
characters of Asper, Crites, Horace. Marston was one 
of the first to receive Ben's onslaught. In Cynthia's 
Revels (1600) Jonson attacked both Marston and Dekker 
as Anaides and Hedon ; and again, hexi; year, Jonson 
laid about him vigorously all round as Horace in the 
Poetaster, which we consider more closely elsewhere. 
About now a useful piece of evidence on this War of the 
Theatres comes to us from The Reiurne from Parnassus, 
a play acted at St. John's College, Cambridge, when the 
War was almost at its height. In Act IV., sc. 5, Burbage 
and Kemp, Shakespeare's fellow-actors, are brought on 
the scene and discuss theatrical and other matters, 
especially the talents of the " University pens." Kemp 
does not think much of these persons. " Why," says 
he, " here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all downe, 
I {i.e. Aye) and Ben Jonson too. O that Ben Jonson is a 
pestilent feUow ; he brought up Horace giving the Poets a 
piU, but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a Purge 
that made him beray his credit." So Jonson had a nasty 
reply from Shakespeare according to this undeniably 
good Cambridge authority. We know from other 



THE POETOMACHIA 83 

sources that Ben had the Satiromastix written against 
his Poetaster, but this was clearly not by Shakespeare but 
by Dekker ; so we must look for Shakespeare's Purge 
somewhere else. Where shall we find it ? I think, for 
several reasons, we shall find that strange play Troilus 
and Cressida to be the Purge meant. It was " our 
fellow Shakespeare's," for it was acted at his theatre by 
his company, and he no doubt took a part and did a good 
business with gag. It was also against Jonson, who was 
satirised in a not very cleanly manner under the character 
of Ajax ( = a jakes), who went running about the field of 
battle asking for himself. This was a Purge indeed. It 
seems to have been put together by Shakespeare, the 
play-broker, in a more miscellaneous manner than was 
usual with him, for it may have been founded on an 
earlier play of the same title by Dekker and Chettle, 
which Henslowe's Diary refers to May 1599 ; and as it 
appears in the folio of 1623 there may be pieces of Bacon 
in it and touches of Shakespeare as well, although the 
folio editors seemed to look askance at one at least of the 
earlier quartos. But whatever else it was, Troilus and 
Cressida was undoubtedly a manifesto of the New 
Romantic school against the Jonsonian Classical school 
of Ben and his " tribe," and was written as a reply to the 
Poetaster, for the Prologue to Troilus begins with an 
armed Prologue entering upon the scene, just as there 
was an armed Prologue in the Poetaster, a circumstance 
unusual, and the subject of some remarks at the time. 
So we may opine that Bacon, Shakespeare, Dekker, and 
Chettle all stood together to give the Classical school of 
Jonson, Chapman, and the rest a good blow in this very 
strange composite play. Marston would be with Jonson's 
tribe in this matter, for Marston was steeped in the 
classic satirists and rather despised the new romantic 
and pathetic tragedies that were rising in the popular 
favour. Sometimes Marston and Jonson were sworn 
foes, and then next year or sooner they would be fulsomely 
lauding each other's plays ; and at different times in 
Jonson's career the same thing happened to him both 



f 



84 BEN JONSON AND BACON 

with Bacon and Shakespeare. At least that is my belief. 
It was a very peculiar characteristic of " rugged Ben," 
for Dekker, who ought to know, wrote thus of him : 
" 'Tis thy fashion to flirt ink in every man's face ; and 
then crawle into his bosome." This remark was in the 
Satiromastix of 1601. It was some long time after this 
that Jonson crawled into Bacon's bosom, but he did 
eventually, and apparently into Shakespeare's too, if he 
and Drayton really had that last carouse with Shake- 
speare at Stratford in 1616. 

I have dwelt longer than I should on this War of the 
Poets, but the better knowledge we have of these matters, 
the more likely we are to take a correct view of the Bacon- 
Shakespeare controversy, which cannot, and should not, 
be dismissed with such words as, " Ridiculous t " " Im- 
possible ! " " Irrational ! " 

Ben Jonson published the Silent Woman in 1609, and 
in Sir John Daw we seem to see Bacon drawn to the life 
as near as " rare old Ben " dared to do it. 

Whether the fact of the Shakespeare Sonnets being 
published about this time had anything to do with these 
daring public allusions, I know not, but I cannot help 
seeing several artfully concealed allusions to the events 
of the Sonnets and to the male love therein dwelt upon. 
. Anyhow, the first seventeen Sonnets are most likely meant 
when Sir John Daw's " BaUad of procreation " is jeered 
at. It is also said of Sir John Daw that he was not a 
professed poet, for he had more caution than to be that ; 
" he 'ill not hinder his own rising in the state so much," 
says one of the characters. Surely this looks like a hit 
for Bacon. It will be further considered when we come 
to the Sonnets. Indeed, that Sir John Daw = Bacon will 
be proved conclusively. 

Ben Jonson's allusions in the Poetaster are a puzzle to 
critics. However, with much diffidence, I will put, as 
succinctly as possible, what appears to be a likely expla- 
nation of the relative positions of some of the combatants 
in the Poetomachia, or War of the Player-poets. It is a 
most important and neglected part of the Bacon-Shake- 



THE POETOMACHIA 85 

speare question, and Ben Jonson's Poetaster, Dekker's 
Satiromastix, Marston's Satires, and Shakespeare's Troilus 
and Cressida, all help to throw light on the true author of 
Shakespeare's Plays ; for although Bacon's name does 
not appear once in the conflict, nor have the Baconians 
(with one exception) tried to bring him into the fight at 
all, still I believe he is there in an Ovidian domino, and 
that Ben Jonson knew the Great Secret as early as 1600-1, 
or even before that date. 

What I mean is that in the Poetaster we have Francis 
Bacon depicted in a vein of Aristophanic banter by Ben 
Jonson, and attacked with jealous and bitter humour in 
the character of Ovid junior. Nay more — and this is 
evidence hitherto altogether unnoticed — Ben Jonson 
seems to hint at the scandal connected with Bacon's 
character, as well as to recognise the rising lawyer and 
political aspirant as the gay young Ovid of the Shake- 
speare Poems, and the provider of plays " at request " 
though " not known unto the open stage." He also aims 
at a play-writer that was mixed up with the suspicious 
and treasonable play Richard II., and was banished from 
court for the share he was supposed to have in it ; and 
who could that be but Bacon ? 

Moreover, it appears that the Poetaster was threatened 
with a prosecution by some persons of rank and position, 
and part was suppressed. Upon this I will only remark 
now, that if this was only a paltry squabble between 
literary hacks and play-actors, who would care to go to 
the Star Chamber or King's Bench about it ? If, how- 
ever. Bacon or his noble friends were involved in the 
scandalous satire it would be a different matter al- 
together. 

The Poetaster has exercised the wits of many search- 
ing critics, but no one, as far as I know, except the 
anonj^mous author of Shakespeare-Bacon, an Essay, 1899, 
has attempted to connect the play with the rising lawyer. 

As I have made several additions to his argument, I 
will proceed to give the main points of the Poetaster, so 
far as it seems to aim at Francis Bacon. 



86 BEN JONSON AND BACON 

The curtain rises with Ovid junior discovered in his 
study putting the finishing touch to some verses he has 
been composing. This young Ovid is a lawyer by pro- 
fession, but has no " stomach " for law, and he is heard 
reciting with evident pleasure the last two lines of his 
poem : 

" Then when this body falls in funeral fire 
My name shall live and my best part aspire" ; 

to which he adds self-complacently, " It shall go so," 
To him then enters Luscus, and says hurriedly, when he 
sees what young Ovid is occupied with, " Young master, 
Master Ovid, do you hear ? Away with your songs and 
sonnets * . . . get a law book in your hand." He tells 
him that his father, Ovid senior, will be coming presently, 
and ends with a tragic warning that " this villainous 
poetry will undo you yet, by the welkin." f Ovid's 
reply is, " What, hast thou buskins on, Luscus, that thou 
swearest so tragically and high ? " Ovid senior is possibly 
Lord Burghley, to whom Bacon looked for preferment 
when he had lost his own father ; and we know that Lord 
Burghley was much against time being wasted over sonnets 
and plays and such frivolities, and thought that Bacon 
should look to the law steadily for his rise in life. Luscus 
entreats young Ovid again and again to give up his verses, 
and not to be " Castalian mad." J But finding it in vain, 
he finally says : " God be with you, sir, I'll leave you to 

* Sonnets ! This was not Ovid's line of poetry. 

+ This fanciful and unusual oath, " by the welkin," and the succeeding 
question, "What, hast thou buskins on, Luscus?" both, I suggest, emphasise 
an allusion to Shakespeare the Player, whom Luscus seems to represent both 
here and elsewhere. It is in the Merry Wives of fVtndsor {!. iii. loi), and 
only there, that we find a similar oath. Pistol says, " Wilt thou revenge ? " 
Nym replies, "By the welkin and her star." So I certainly think Ben is 
here getting a joke against Shakespeare the Player and his way of bombasting 
out blank verse with the metaphorical buskins on, and is here giving us one 
of the "locks of wool" or "shreds" which the Player contributed to the 
Baconian fleece. 

To POET-APK. 

Fool ! as if half eyes will not know a fleece 

From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece. 

t Referring probably to Venus and Adonis, which had the Castalian 
spring in its motto from Ovid : ^^ Pocula Casia ltd plena minislret aqua.'" 



OVID JUNIOR 87 

your poetical fancies and furies. I'll not be guilty, I. 
{Exit Luscus.) " Young Ovid thus left to himself recites 
his poem, which turns out to be that very part of the 
Elegies of Ovid from which the motto prefixed to Venus 
and Adonis had been taken by the supposed Shakespeare. 
Just as Ovid finishes there come upon the scene Ovid 
senior, Luscus, Tucca (a braggadocio of the army), and 
Lupus. Ovid's father, seizing the situation at once, 
attacks : 

Is this the scope and aim of thy studies? Verses! Poetry! 
Ovid whom I thought to see the pleader, become Ovid the play- 
maker ? 

Ovid Jim. No, sir. 

Ovid Sen. Yes, sir ; I hear of a tragedy of yours coming forth for 
the common players there, called Medea. 

Luscus here interposes a remark that he did " augur 
all this to him (young Ovid) beforehand," whereon Tucca 
turns on him with angry contempt, and with other abuse 
tells Luscus (Shakespeare the actor ?) to " talk to tapsters 
and ostlers, you slave, they are in your element, go : 
here be the emperor's captains, you ragamuffin rascal, 
and not your comrades. {Exit Luscus.) " 

On this I would only say that if Shakespeare came 
up from Stratford and first obtained work in connection 
with the stables of old Burbage's inn, and afterwards 
rose to be an actor, then Ben Jonson would be the very 
one to know it and make a point of it. 

Even when Luscus has departed, Tucca continues his 
venomous remarks : " They forget they are in the statute, 
the rascals ; they are blazoned there ; there they are 
tricked, they and their pedigrees ; they need no other 
heralds, I wiss." This is surely another of the many 
thrusts at the Shakespeares aspiring for a grant of arms 
from the Heralds' College. Presently young Ovid tries 
to excuse himself thus : 

Ovid Jun. They wrong me, sir, and do abuse you more 
That blow your ears with these untrue reports. 
I am not known unto the open stage, 
Nor do I traffic in their theatres: 



^ 



88 BEN JONSON AND BACON 

Indeed, I do acknowledge, at request 
Of some near friends, and honourable Romans, 
I have begun a poem of that nature. 
Ovid Sen. You have, sir, a poem! and where is it? That's the 
law you study. 

Ovid J tin. Cornelius Gallus borrowed it to read. 
Ovid Sen. Cornelius Gallus! there's another gallant too hath 
drunk of the same poison, and Tibullus and Propertius. But these 
are gentlemen of means and revenues now. Thou art a younger 
brother, and hast nothing but thy bare exhibition ; which I protest 
shall be bare indeed, if thou forsake not these unprofitable by-courses. 
Name me a profest poet that his poetry did ever so much as afford 
him a competency. 

I suggest that Ben Jonson aims at Francis Bacon in 
all the above allusions. Bacon was a younger brother, 
disliked his profession of the law, and (if my supposition 
is correct) took to poetry instead, and, what was con- 
sidered much worse, wrote for the public theatres. His 
intimates were wealthy gallants, Southampton, Pembroke, 
Essex, and others, and some of them were given to poetry 
as well. Ben Jonson names them not, but as CorneUus 
Gallus, Tibullus, &c., and thus was able to defend 
himself in his " Apologetical Dialogue " to the Poetaster, 
which was prohibited through some powerful influence 
(perhaps Bacon) and not printed tUl some time after. 
The author there says : 

" I used no name. My books have still been taught 
To spare the persons and to speak the vices." 

And I am afraid the vices of young Ovid are here 
spoken out, for Lupus and Tucca both advise young Ovid 
to stick to the law. " He that will now hit the mark 
must shoot through the law," says Lupus ; and Tucca 
adds that it is easy enough as a profession, a Uttle talk 
and noise and impudence will serve, " and the less art 
the better : besides when it shall be in the power of thy 
chevrU conscience to do right or wrong at thy pleasure, 
my pretty Alcibiades." I think Ben Jonson knew how 
those words, chevril and Alcibiades, were like to gall Bacon 
far better than we do, but we may be sure of this, they 
are not meant to allude to his virtues. 



A STRONG SATIRE 89 

In the suppressed " Apologetical Dialogue " we have 
some further vicious allusions. Ben says of the authors 
who had attacked him : 

" I could stamp 
Their foreheads with those deep and public brands, 
That the whole company of barber-surgeons 
Should not take off, with all their art and plasters, 
And these my prints should last, still to be read 
In their pale fronts." 

And some lines before we read : 

" Not one of them but lives himself, if known, 
Improbior satiram scribente cincEtioP 

This looks like attacking " scandals " in pretty plain 
language, so plain indeed that some " cheveril " lawyer 
(perhaps Bacon) either went, or threatened to go, to the 
Star Chamber about the libel, as Ben Jonson tells us 
himself in two of his Epigrams, to be quoted presently. 

Then later on there is a great deal about some treason, 
conjuration, or conspiracy that was to be brought forward 
by some of the poet-players, and Ovid among them, at 
a theatre, and we are told how Histrio, an actor, informs 
the authorities of the state, and how eventually it comes 
to the emperor's ears, and Ovid is banished from court. 
The information that Histrio supplies is to the effect 
that a letter was directed to him and his fellow-sharers 
in the theatre, asking to hire some of the stage properties, 
a sceptre, crown, caduceus, petasus, &c. As soon as 
Lupus, who seems to represent some state official, hears 
of it he says : " Player, I thank thee : the Emperor shall 
take knowledge of thy good service ; this is a conjura- 
tion, a conspiracy, this." * 

* There are some passages and characters in the Poeiasterhy Ben Jonson 
which throw, I believe, some interesting fresh light on Shakespeare and Bacon, 
and especially upon the well-known acting of Richard II. on the eve of that day 
when Essex sought to recover his position by stirring up a rebellion in the city. 
We know that the play was ordered to be performed that evening specially by 
command of the heads of the Essex faction, and that a sum of 40s. was 
paid to the company to induce them to revive this play, now some time out 
of vogue. It was thought to be treasonable, and all the more so on account of 
the circumstances attending the performance, and the particular time chosen. 
The matter was brought up as evidence against Essex at his trial, and told 



90 BEN JONSON AND BACON 

Now all this fits in with what we know of the play of 
Richard II. being acted by arrangement before Essex 
and his party the night before they made their mad 
attempt on the city. Bacon was placed in an awkward 
predicament at the trial of Essex, as is well known, by 
having to help in the prosecution of his old friend and 
patron, and also to bring in constructive treason in con- 
nection with Richard II. being played the evening before 
to encourage the conspirators. Bacon did not like his 
position at all, for, as he suggested, it might be bruited 
abroad that he was bringing in evidence one of his own 
tales. 

There was certainly suspicion raised against Bacon 
about this time (1601), and he was under a cloud, virtually 
banished from court, although the Queen took his legal 
advice when necessary. The Poetaster was written shortly 
after these events, when they were still occupying men's 

against him very much, and embittered the Queen, who, feeling that she was 
aimed at in the plot of the piece, treated it as a personal matter. However, 
strange to say, the players of this supposed treasonable plot got off scot-free, 
and Shakespeare was not so much as once named in connection with the play, 
though he took a prominent part both in the composition and acting of the 
play, and the matter was apparently well sifted at the trial. But if we take 
the play to be an old one written by Bacon some time previously, we shall find 
that Ben's allusions to the matter in the Poetaster all fit in excellently, and we 
shall understand, in a way never understood before, what most probably hap- 
pened in regard to this one memorable revival of Richard II. on the eve of the 
foolish rising of Essex. There are two characters in the Poetaster called by 
the stage names of Histrio and yEsop, and the first seems by a particularly 
clear allusion to be Alleyn, who made so much money as builder and manager 
(in part) of the Fortune Theatre. 

In Act III. sc. I Captain Tucca, a swaggering militaire, sees Histrio pass 
by him without due deferential salute ; so he has him called back and rates him 
for it : "No respect to men of worship, you slave ! Ha ! you grow rich, do 
you, and purchase, you two-penny tear-mouth, you have FORTUNE and the 
good year on your side." Histrio would thus appear to point t(j Alleyn of 
the prosperous Fortune Theatre, where he acted and was joint owner with his 
father-in-law, whereas Henslowe, who did not act, does not answer to the 
description. And in Act IV. sc. 2 and elsewhere we have Histrio, or Alleyn, 
telling a certain high official either of the court or city that there is a conspiracy 
being hatched in connection with a certain play by young Master Ovid (Francis 
Bacon), and that he (.Alleyn) discovered it by reason of a letter directed to 
him and his fellow-sharers of his theatre (the Rose and the Fortune were both 
his at this date), begging to be allowed to hire some of his stage properties — 
a sceptre, crown, and a petasus, &c. This sets the official in a mind to look 



A CLEVER PARODY 91 

minds, and therefore likely to be introduced into a new 
satirical comedy. For the theatres took, to a great 
extent, the place of newspapers and society journals in 
the Elizabethan days. Moreover, there is a long love 
scene between Ovid and Julia (his " dear Julia, the 
abstract of the court ") which the annotators of the play 
can make nothing of ; it is called by one of them " a 
kind of metaphysical hurly-burly, of which it is not easy 
to discover the purport or end." But this high-flown 
lover's dialogue between Ovid below and Julia at her 
chamber window is very likely a striking and clever 
parody on Romeo and Juliet, and so fits in with the rest 
of Ben Jonson's allusions throughout his Poetaster, and 
gives us good grounds for thinking that he, at least, as 
early as 1602, had got to know that Bacon was the author 
of Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, Romeo and Juliet, and 
Richard II. 

into the matter, and he seems to have obtained further information from a player 
named /Esop, who can be identified for several reasons with Shakespeare. The 
official tells CKsar( Elizabeth the Queen), and yEsop is brought upon the stage 
to answer before Cssar, and Captain Tucca describes him thus (Act V. sc. l) : 

" 'Tis a gentleman of quality this, though he be somewhat out of clothes, 
I tell ye. — Come, /Esop, hast a bay leaf in thy mouth ? * Well said ; be not 
out, stinkard. Thou shalt have a monopoly of playing confirmed to thee and 
thy covey under the emperor's broad seal for this service." 

The result is that Caesar orders him to be taken away, and adds this in- 
junction to the satellites who hurry him off : 

" Gag him that we may have his silence." 

If we read between the lines correctly it looks as if Shakespeare's company 
at the Globe, when asked on short notice to perform Richard II., an old play, 
at once sent off to Alleyn at the Rose Theatre, not far off, to beg the hire of 
such old stage properties of the piece as they might still have about the theatre. 
Thereupon Alleyn, who was no friend to his rising rival the Globe, suspecting 
what was about to be done, eventually informed the authorities. Then ^Esop, 
or Shakespeare, was questioned, and he cleared himself by showing he was not 
the real author. Silence was imposed upon him — he was gagged, and the 
matter allowed to drop into oblivion. If Richard II. passed as one of Shake- 
speare's Plays in i6oi, it has always puzzled commentators to explain why, 
when there was a judicial investigation into this important matter, it so 
happened that Shakespeare's name was not referred to throughout the inquiry. 
I think Ben Jonson in the Poetaster lets us somewhat into the secret of the 
matter : Ovid, i.e. Bacon, was at the bottom of it. 



* A bay leaf was thought to be conducive to eloquence if placed under the 
ongue — the bay, too, was sacred to Apollo. 



92 BEN JONSON AND BACON 

But the whole play should be carefully read ; it is 
full of contemporary allusions, and the quick-witted 
theatre-goers of the day would seize upon them with 
avidity. 

Anyhow, Shakespearians all allow that the author of 
the Poems was a great admirer of Ovid, and Professor 
Baynes has shown at great length * that Shakespeare 
was familiar with Ovid to a degree formerly little sus- 
pected ; that Shakespeare was independent of English 
translations of the Elegies, for they had not yet been 
made ; and that quite early in life, before he left Stratford, 
Shakespeare knew his Ovid pretty intimately, and with 
the perception of a scholar. I must say I would rather 
take Jonson's word that Shakespeare " knew little Latin," 
and accept Jonson's allusions as meaning that the true 
Ovid of the Poems, of Romeo and Juliet, and of Richard II. 
was Francis Bacon, the needy " younger brother " of 
Gray's Inn, who had no " stomach to digest this law," 
but who had friends who were " gentlemen of means and 
revenues," and was himself well-nigh " Castalian mad," 
and in addition nearly got himself into trouble over the 
play of Richard II. We know well enough from Ben 
Jonson's Epigrams who it was that stirred up the autho- 
rities against the Poetaster and its Epilogue. It was 
Cheveril, the Lawyer. 

EPIGRAM LIV 
Cheveril cries out my verses libels are ; 
And threatens the Star-Chamber and the Bar. 
What are thy petulant pleadings, Cheveril, then, 
That quit'st the cause so oft, and rail'st at men ? 

EPIGRAM XXXVII 
On Cheveril the Lawyer 
No cause, nor client fat, will Cheveril leese, 
But as they come, on both sides he takes fees, 
And pleaseth both ; for while he melts his grease 
For this ; that wins, for whom he holds his peace. 

The sobriquet " Cheveril " was probably given from a 
common saying, used by Stubbes, Anatomy of Abuses : 

* Shakespeare Studies, 1894, pp. 195-249, 



SHAKESPEARE'S LOVE OF THE STAGE 93 

" The lawyers have such cheveril consciences," i.e. they 
stretch as easily as a kid glove. Or else the omnivorous 
Ben had noticed the word " cheveril " two or three times 
in the Shakespeare Plays, and thought it would be a 
capital word to turn against Bacon, and to hoist him 
with his own petard, for in the matter of the Essex treason 
it was generally felt that Bacon's conscience had been of 
a most yielding, soft, and ultra-expansive kind — and so 
on Cheveril the Lawyer would score a hit. 

As is well known, Ben Jonson eventually (c. 16 17) 
became on friendly terms with Bacon, and at the latter 
end of the Lord Chancellor's Hfe, and after his disgrace, 
the friendly terms rose to personal intimacy, and Ben 
was very useful to Bacon in literary matters and Latin 
translations, and undoubtedly had a large share in bring- 
ing out the First Folio of 1623, and arranging and writing 
the prefatory matter. 

I have already given my view that Luscus stands for 
Shakespeare the actor in Marston's Scourge of Villainie, 
and that Luscus also stands for the same famous Stratford 
player in Ben Jonson's Poetaster, just considered. If we 
accept this we shall get some interesting addition to our 
very scanty budget of facts about Shakespeare's personal 
characteristics. According to Marston, the actor-manager, 
Shakespeare was thoroughly taken up by his profession, 

and he 

" Ne'er of ought did speak ^ / 

But when of plays and players he did treat." J} "^ 

This sounds very likely, and would account for the little 
we hear of Shakespeare publicly or in society. He stuck 
close to his routine of theatrical work, and was frugal 
and careful about money, as we can judge by results. 
Marston hints also that he was a critic of plays, and 
transferred the passages he admired into his common- 
place book, that he was much applauded " by curtain 
{i.e. the Curtain Theatre) plaudities," that he was a fine 
delineator of character, and that he managed to do all this 

" From out his huge long-scraped stock 
Of well-penn'd plays." 



94 BEN JONSON AND BACON 

This seems probable enough, and would account very 
well for the contemporary views which we meet with 
concerning him. Shakespeare was a busy, important, 
actor-manager, with his heart in his work, with a gift 
of flowing, felicitous language, and possibly a power of 
gag in addition ; all this impressed the audience and the 
public, and it did not occur to any of his contemporaries 
that the plays, attributed to him openly in print, were 
beyond his powers — except those few, such as Jonson, 
Marston, and Hall, who had discovered the secret, as I 
contend. Looked at in this light, the proof of the Shake- 
spearian authorship inferred from the contemporary 
assent to it is by no means a weighty proof, and yet this 
is the grand, incontrovertible, and decisive proof that 
the orthodox critics rely upon. 

I hope that the evidence adduced so far throws 
a little new light on the way in which Ben Jonson 
viewed Shakespeare and Bacon. But we still get Ben's 
view of Shakespeare best from the Epigram on the 
Poet-ape, and when we remember that this was first 
published in the collected edition of Jonson's works in 
1616, the year of Shakespeare's death, we shall have to 
consider it, I am afraid, as Ben's final judgment on his 
contemporary, and we shall have to conclude that both 
Ben Jonson and Greene thought very little of the Player's 
talents or literary methods. As late as the eve of Shake- 
speare's death, Ben Jonson seems to have had as little re- 
spect for Shakespeare's genius as he had in 1602, and this 
certainly leads me to think that he knew very well that 
Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Lear, and many other re- 
markable dramas that were then being brought forth, were 
not from the brain of Shakespeare the player and parcel- 
poet. Not even in a moment of envy could Ben have called 
such productions " the frippery of wit." He was a better 
critic than that, although I believe his theory of art did not 
quite agree with the art as displayed in the plays — it was 
not classic enough in form for the learned Ben ; and that 
is what he meant when he told Drummond of Hawthorn- 
den, in 1618, that Shakespeare wanted art. 



SHAKESPEARE'S SHREDS 95 

But let us read again his Epigram : 

" Poor Poet-ape that would be thought our chief, 

Whose works are e'en the frippery of wit, 
From brokage is become so bold a thief, 

As we the robb'd, leave rage, and pity it. 
At first he made low shifts, would pick and glean, 

Buy the reversion of old plays ; now grown 
To a little wealth and credit in the scene. 

He takes up all, makes each man's wit his own, 
And told of this he slights it. Tut, such crimes 

The sluggish gaping auditor devours ; 
He marks not whose 'twas first, and aftertimes 

May judge it to be his, as well as ours. 
-* Fool ! as if half eyes will not know a fleece 

From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece." 

Does not this look as if Ben Jonson knew that Bacon 
supplied the fleece, and that the successful player " grown 
to a little wealth " was only responsible for certain shreds 
or locks of wool in it ? I name Bacon for the fleece, 
because there are no hints in any of Ben's Aristophanic 
allusions of any other possible provider for such a re- 
markable article, and because all the hints that are given 
seem, as we have just seen in the Poetaster and other 
plays, to point directly to Bacon. We gather also from 
this important Epigram that Shakespeare the Player had 
become a " credit in the scene " — that he was now not 
merely a Johannes Fac-totum full of conceit, who supposed 
that he could " bombast out a blank verse " {i.e. write 
or fill one out) as well as any one, as Greene said in 1592, 
but a good and capable actor as well. This quite does 
away with the foolish tradition that his best effort was 
the Ghost in his own Hamlet, and also should prevent 
Baconians from making the too-wide assertion that 
Bacon wrote Shakespeare, which we can plainly see from 
this present Epigram is not strictly correct, Shakespeare 
the Player had a hand in the Plays ; his shreds are there, 
though no one can pick them out now for certain. He was 
a " broker " of old or unfinished plays, and a " gleaner " 
in other men's fields, and he did not care if people taxed 
him with it. "He slights it," He was making money 



96 BEN JONSON AND BACON 

in a legitimate way, and some such " factotum " there 
must be in every company that wants to keep ahve in the 
pubhc estimation. Such Uterary banthngs as other men 
did not care to bring up, or were partly ashamed of, he 
would " take up " ; and when they came to maturity 
under his hand, by what name should they be presented 
to the public unless it were his name ? True, when he 
wrote his own name he did not spell it Shake-speare, and 
these bantlings appeared under that form of speUing, but 
as he had been called Shake-scene in 1592, he was not 
likely to care much for being called Shake-speare in 1598. 
Perhaps one of the " grand possessors " of the plays who 
had a talent for mystifying the public preferred that form. 
The Stratford man could afford to " slight " this mere 
detail, and if Poems were sent forth to the world in 1593 
and 1594 with William Shakespeare at the foot of the 
dedications, well, he " slighted " that too, even if the 
surly " Ben " should call him " Poet-ape " on this very 
account. 

But the Stratford man was responsible for some of the 
work in the Plays — not the best of it — and perhaps was 
responsible also for more of the facetious vulgarity than 
we shall ever know about. There are certainly a good 
many shreds in the fleece that do not look as if they ever 
belonged to Bacon. Just take some of the names of the 
inferior characters, in connection with the following fact. 
During the year Nov. 1591-Nov. 1592 the country was 
searched for recusants. In some counties more than one 
commission was held. This was the case in Warwick- 
shire, where we find there was a second commission in 
this year 1591-2. At the head of this we find the names 
of Sir Thomas Lucy and Sir Fulke Greville, who were 
active persecutors of the Papists. There is a long list of 
recusants and others who did not come to the parish 
church for divers reasons, and John Shakespeare, the 
father of William Shakespeare, is one of them. Strange 
to say, there are seven of the characters of the Plays 
among these Warwickshire recusants, viz. Page, Fluellen, 
Gower, Bates, Court, Bardolph, and Bolt. According to 



THE SEVEN RECUSANTS 97 

Aubrey, the names of the poet's dramatic personages 
were often taken from the circle of his acquaintance, for 
he and Ben Jonson gathered humours wherever they 
went ; thus the original of Dogberry was a constable 
Shakespeare met one midsummer night at Crendon in 
Bucks. 

The authority for the above is Father Bowden,* who 
endeavours to show that Shakespeare was of the Old 
Religion and a good Roman Catholic. I assume that 
his list of recusants is correct, and therefore admit that 
for seven Stratford or Warwickshire recusants to have 
their names put in the Plays is a curious fact that wants 
explanation. It certainly looks as if Shakespeare put 
them there, or supplied the names to Bacon. But our 
theory does not exclude the supposition that Shakespeare 
touched up for the gallery whatever MSS. he obtained. 

But now the question arises, and a very important 
one it is, if Ben Jonson so depreciates Shakespeare as the 
Poet-ape, how can it possibly have happened that in 
1623, only seven years afterwards, this same broker of 
old plays, and patcher of shreds, this parcel-poet with 
his frippery of wit, became at once in Ben's eyes the 

" Soul of the Age ! 
The applause ! delight ! the wonder of our Stage ! 
My Shakespeare ! " 

How can it be that we have in 1623 the full-page portrait 
of the maligned Player William Shakespeare prefixed to 
the collected Plays, and opposite to the portrait some 
more lines by his quondam maligner Ben, who now calls 
him " Gentle Shakespeare," whereas of old he called him 
anything but " gentle," and was continually deriding his 
claims on the Heralds' College ? " They forget they are 
i' the statute, the rascals ; they are blazoned there ; 
there they are tricked they and their pedigrees, they 
need no other heralds I wiss." t Is it possible that the 
surly, cantankerous, envious, and independent Ben 
assumes the office of a Herald in the folio and calls 

• Religion of Shakespeare, p. 83. t Poetaster ^ Act I. sc. i. 

G 



98 BEN JONSON AND BACON 

Shakespeare " gentle " to his face ? It must be ad- 
mitted that it seems so, and has seemed so from the time 
it was written until the present day. 

This portrait of the Player, and the laudatory verses 
accompanying it in the first collected edition of the 
Shakespeare Plays, have, taken together, effectually pre- 
cluded all argument or doubt about authorship for quite 
two hundred and forty years, and they still are the great 
stronghold of the orthodox party. They reason thus : 
Whatever kind of man Ben Jonson might be, rugged, 
cantankerous, Aristophanic, or even libellous, yet he was 
of such a bold and independent nature that he could not 
possibly become such a mean, sycophantic liar as to 
declare Shakespeare the Player to be the author of the 
immortal Plays, when he knew all the time that Bacon 
was the right man. Now, the strength of this argument 
is very great ; in fact this portrait and the title-pages 
accompanying it have been called Shakespeare's title- 
deeds to his property, and they certainly are the best 
that his admirers can produce before the court of public 
opinion. They have been brought up and verified again 
and again, and those who produce them have always 
maintained, and still maintain, that the disputers of 
Shakespeare's title have absolutely " no case." The 
leading critics and the leading newspapers with one voice 
shout out " No case " ; or if they do not shout, they 
enter into a conspiracy of silence. 

The argument certainly seems decisive, and at first 
sight one would suppose there was no more to be said. 
But the more this particular matter is examined, the more 
suspicious does it become. There seems some juggling 
with words and phrases here. There seems some 
" mystery," and what Ben Jonson wrote concerning 
Bacon, who was celebrating his sixty-first birthday at 
York House — " Thou stand'st as though some mystery 
thou didst " — may well be retorted upon Ben's lines that 
face the famous Droeshout engraving of Shakespeare. 
The lines do not seem to say what they mean. I 
certainly had no suspicion of anything misleading in 



AN AMBIGUOUS TESTIMONIAL 99 

the lines until the suggestion was made to me some 
years ago, and then a somewhat similar case of hood- 
winking by phraseology came into my mind which had 
happened within my own knowledge long before. A 
friend of mine was applying for a mathematical tutorship, 
and sent round to his old College friends and tutors for 
testimonials as to fitness and ability. He received one 
from a very distinguished mathematician in these words : 

" Gentlemen, — Mr. X. has applied to me, on the ground of 
our former acquaintance and friendship, for a testimonial as to his 
mathematical abilities. I am not in favour of verbose or elabo- 
rate testimonials, and therefore I hope it will be sufficient for me 
to say that I always have valued and do still value his mathe- 
matical attainments quite as highly as I do his friendship. I knew 
him during several years, so my opinion has the merit of being 
founded at least on some experience." 

Mr. X. was very pleased with this, and showed it to 
me with some degree of pride as coming from so eminent 
a man. I remember at the time that it seemed to me 
rather curt and indefinite ; but eminent mathematicians 
have their little peculiarities as I knew well enough, and 
so I thought no more about it, especially when I heard 
that X. had been chosen for the post he sought, mainly, 
as he thought, on the weight of this particular reference. 
Some time afterwards I heard that the eminent mathe- 
matician had " given himself away " by remarking in an 
unguarded moment that he really didn't care a button 
either for Mr. X.'s mathematics or his friendship, one was 
no better than the other. In fact, neither Mr. X. nor I, nor 
yet, as it appears, the gentlemen of the committee, had any 
suspicion of the bona fides of the distinguished reference. 
They took their first impression, and retained it. 

Now I think this is exactly what people have been 
doing for a long term of years with Ben Jonson's testi- 
monial to Shakespeare. They have taken for granted 
that it was intended in a good sense, and do not suspect 
for a moment that it may be a kick rather than a com- 
pliment. It was just so with Mr. X. The more I read 



loo BEN JONSON AND BACON 

these " commendatory verses " of Ben Jonson, the less 
sure I am that they are commendatory, the less sure I 
am that Shakespeare the Player is meant, and the more 
likely it seems that Shakespeare here = Bacon. The very 
first Hnes are puzzling : 

" To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name. 
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame." 

Envy has to do with the living more than with the 
dead — the lines might be ^ propos in Bacon's case, but 
hardly so in Shakespeare's. Envy here seems to mean 
ill reputation, or the wagging tongues of enemies. These 
could tarnish Bacon's name, and his revealed connection 
with writing plays for the theatres would be harm to him 
rather than good. But it would be different in Shake- 
speare's case, and he too was out of the reach of wagging 
tongues of envy. And further on the lines about " crafty 
malice " pretending to praise, and yet intentionally ruin- 
ing the object of that praise, would bear some rational 
meaning if applied to Bacon, who would be ruined for a 
seat in the House of Lords if it leaked out that he was a 
play-writer ; but the application to Shakespeare is much 
less clear. Then Ben goes on to say that Shakespeare is " a 
Monument without a tomb," and that he is alive still — 
which is rather startling until we read on, " while thy Book 
doth live." Which sounds rather like word-jugglery. 

And when we come to the famous words facing the 
portrait,* matters seem to get even still more suspicious 
and mystifying. That word " brass " does not sound 
very complimentary ; we think of a brazen-faced impostor, 
or we think, perhaps, of those well-known Hnes in the 
play of King Henry VIII. : 

" Men's evil mamters Hve in brass ; their virtues 
We write in water." 

And we feel the wooden-headed effigy has had a down- 
right kick. Moreover, we are told not to look at it : 

" Reader, look 
Not on his picture, but his book." 

* Given in Appendix, with curious matter connected therewith. 



THE DROESHOUT FIGURE loi 

This seems, too, a strange injunction, and if we break 
it, and carefully inspect the picture, what do we find ? 
We shall find, so Mr. Lee tells us, that only twenty of 
these figures (out of two hundred copies extant) are 
printed on the title-page ; the rest are either inlaid or in 
some way imperfect. This again looks as if there was 
something wrong originally, or that another portrait had 
been intended for the space. And what is still more 
singular, the dress of the figure that faces Ben Jonson's 
lines looks more like the dress of an aristocrat or court- 
gallant than the plain dress of a bourgeois Player. Alto- 
gether we cannot help feeling that there is more here 
than meets the eye. And the way in which Ben Jonson, 
who after Shakespeare's death seems to have been per- 
manently reconciled to Bacon, clearly took the leading 
part in ushering the book to the public, and quite put 
Heminge and Condell in the background, adds much to the 
singular mystery surrounding the wliole production of the 
contents of that renowned book — perhaps the most 
wonderful single volume in the whole of literature — the 
first folio of 1623. 

One more remark before we dismiss this famous 
Droeshout woodcut. As Ben Jonson was necessarily 
much at Gorhambury when he was helping Bacon to 
get his works translated into Latin (a year or two before 
the 1623 folio), we may take it for granted that he had 
seen or knew of Milliard's picture of young Francis in 
1578, round which the painter had inscribed — " Si tabula 
daretur digna, animam maller^i,^' i.e. Would that I could 
paint his mind ! Would that I had a material or canvas 
worthy of such a subject ! 

The very fact of this same rather unusual idea being 
brought into Ben's lines, seems to point towards Bacon, 
or at least to Jonson having Bacon's picture in his thoughts 
when he wrote his mystifying lines. But how courteous 
and lucid is Hilliard ; there is no suspicious " brass " in 
his eulogy. How different when we come to Ben's verses, 
and the hydrocephalic-looking figure which faces them. 
Surely such a head never brought forth Pallas Athend 



I02 BEN JONSON AND BACON 

fully armed and shaking her speare against Ignorance and 
Folly. 

Besides, this figure-head is not like the head on the 
Stratford tomb ; you would hardly believe they could 
both be the same man. The orthodox party will persist 
in seeing " a kind of likeness," but many, who have com- 
pared the two, think (and I with them) that the only 
marked resemblance is the baldness on the top of the head ! 

Perhaps now is the best time to say a few words about 
the Shakespeare monument in the chancel of Stratford- 
on- Avon's parish church. This too is considered one of 
the " indubitable proofs " that William Shakespeare, who 
was buried there, wrote the immortal Plays. 

If we knew who put the monument where it is, and 
who composed the inscriptions that are upon it, then 
some very strong evidence might be gathered from it. 
But we are in utter ignorance on both points, and are 
therefore left somewhat in suspense as to our judgment 
in this matter. We do not hear a word about it till 1623, 
seven years after Shakespeare's death, and then the first 
mention of it appears in that famous firsts folio which 
has so many remarkable and suspicious circumstances 
connected with its publication. 

These peculiar circumstances detract considerably from 
the weight of evidence which such a monument would 
generally afford. The crowds of Americans and other 
people who are constantly passing before this shrine and 
god of their pilgrimage as a rule hold but one opinion 
on this subject, and that is, " The tomb settles the ques- 
tion." But does it really ? Is the Baconian stream of 
evidence, which has of late years so increased in volume, 
and is rushing on daily with increasing force, to be dammed 
at once and for ever by a tomb. Can a piece of sculptured 
masonry, prepared and put up by " no one knows who," 
be strong enough to resist or turn back such a swelling 
torrent ? My own answer would be, " Certainly not," 
and I would remark in addition that the first line of the 
famous Latin inscription on the tomb looks very much 
as if it was composed and placed there by some one who 



THE MURAL EPITAPH 103 

knew the Great Secret and Mystery of the problem that 
faces us. 

What does this Hne tell us ? It says that the man 
there buried was : 

'■'■Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem" 

that is to say, he was : 

*' A Nestor in experienced judgment, 
A Socrates in philosophical genius, 
And an Ovid in the Poetry of Love." 

Could the mind of mortal man earn higher meed of praise 
than that ? Where else could these three great, yet 
diverse, merits be found to exist together in supreme 
excellence in one man ? I made my first pilgrimage to 
the tomb in my undergraduate days, and I well remember 
how that Latin line, and its trebly condensed praise, 
arrested my attention : 

" And still I gazed, and still the wonder grew, 
That one small head should carry all he knew." 

I was strictly orthodox, for in those days no one ever 
caught even a whiff of heresy, and while I stood in reve- 
rential awe before that shrine I thought of no one but 
the Stratford genius, and that other genius of ancient 
Greece — that " blind old man of Scio's rocky isle," who 
was the only parallel instance of such God-given powers 
of mind that then occurred to me. Ah ! quantum mutatus 
— now that famous Latin line on the tomb seems far 
more appropriate to Bacon than to Shakespeare ; and 
as for the Stratford Player being either a Nestor or a 
Socrates, I must confess I have found hardly a tittle of 
corroboration for this in any account of him either by 
friend or foe. 

Judicio Pylius — a Nestor in judgment! The quality 
for which Nestor was chiefly famed in antiquity was his 
wisdom, or judicious advice, in the council-chamber of 
heroes. I do not quite see where this quality shows itself 
in any special manner in Shakespeare's Hfe. On the 
other hand, there are few persons in all history to whom 



I04 BEN JONSON AND BACON 

the words are more applicable than to the great Francis 
Bacon. He, if any man, was a Nestor in wisdom and 
in judgment ; wise, as he sat and thought in his study; 
wise, as he sat on the seat of judgment and of law, and 
passed decrees concerning which Rushworth said, " Never 
any decree made by him was reversed as unjust." Not 
even after his fall and disgrace were his decisions over- 
ruled. Nowhere could a more judicious counsellor or 
giver of advice be found in Elizabethan England ; and 
he was always ready with his advice, be it to his Queen, 
to his fellow-aristocrats, or to his private friends. He 
had the courage of his opinions when quite a young man, 
and when in later life he sat in his arm-chair at Gorham- 
bury meditating, he was indeed Judicio Pylius — a Nestor 
in judgment — lacking nothing but Nestor's years. 

Take the second historic parallel of the tomb. Genio 
Socraiem — a Socrates by his genius. I cannot see that 
there was much of the " Socratic method " or the Socratic 
philosophy displayed in any part of the hfe of William 
Shakespeare the Player, so far as we know it. His 
marrying before he could support a family was not 
Socratic ; nor yet his rather sordid money-getting ways 
as actor-manager. Socrates was an accurate logician, 
and had an exalted opinion of a good and valid argument ; 
but when Shakespeare was discovered upon the premises 
of a London citizen where he had legally no locus standi, 
he came to the conclusion that the best way to deal with 
Burbage, his fellow-tragedian, who was knocking for 
admittance (and also seeking a locus standi), was to give 
him a piece of Shakespearian logic, which was to the 
effect that William the Conqueror was before Richard HI. ; 
ergo, or rather, argal William had a present locus standi, 
and Richard therefore must wait for a future one. I 
cannot call this Socratic either in logic or morals, and I 
think the great friend of Plato would have objected to 
the premises he occupied, the conclusion he came to, the 
locus standi he illegally took, and above all, the bastard 
logic by which he tried to defend it. Now the great 
Lord Chancellor had somewhat of the true logical and 



THE STRATFORD TOMB 105 

philosophical spirit of Socrates in him, and he has left 
us good proof of it in the Instauratio Magna, the Novum 
Organum, the Essays, the Apophthegms, and other acknow- 
ledged works of his ; but to put in the first line of William 
Shakespeare's epitaph that he was genio Socratem was a 
most strange choice of words, and by no means what one 
would expect. Besides all this, the words contain a 
howling false quantity, and will not scan. The ante- 
penultimate of Socrates is as long as one's arm, and there- 
fore cannot get into a hexameter at all. If a Greek 
Omega is not long, I don't know what letter can be. It 
has been thought that Ben Jonson or some London friend, 
or possibly Dr. Hall, the son-in-law, composed this 
precious line. It could hardly be the classic Ben, unless, 
perchance, he made the slip on purpose that posterity 
should not credit him with such vile prosody and such 
inappropriate praise. Nor do our difficulties end here, 
for there is another mystery ; no one knows when the 
monument was erected, who paid for it, and who arranged 
the inscriptions. There may have been no monument at 
all until about a few months before the folio of 1623 was 
ready for publication, for anything we know to the con- 
trary. Leonard Digges is the first writer who tells us a 
single word about it, and that is not till Shakespeare had 
been in his grave seven years. In some commendatory 
verses prefixed to the first folio of 1623, Digges tells us 
that Shakespeare's works would be alive when 

" Time dissolves thy Stratford monument," 

and that is all the information we get, 

I have, some may think, dwelt longer than neces- 
sary on this monument and its epitaph. My reason has 
been this ; so many people think it definitely settles the 
question we are considering, whereas I think it does little 
more than leave us in suspense when we have considered 
all the evidence, and the singular circumstances connected 
with it. We really do not know enough how and when it 
came into existence, or who placed it where we now see it. 
It is by no means impossible, or even utterly improbable, 



io6 BEN JONSON AND BACON 

that the persons who arranged and edited the first foho 
also arranged and edited this monument, and are re- 
sponsible for the " writing on the wall." This requires 
an interpreter quite as much as did that other writing at 
Belshazzar's Feast, and we are not likely to be sure of 
our interpretation until we know for certain who wrote 
the inscription, and with what object it was thus 
strangely conceived and worded. 

And so once again and finally, neither the Figure in 
the Folio nor the Effigy in the Stratford Chancel definitely 
settles the authorship of the Shakespeare Plays. And 
the curious laudation of Shakespeare by Ben Jonson 
seems so full of double meanings and mystifying ex- 
pressions, that it is bereft of most of its evidential value. 
" But," some one may say, " Ben calls Shakespeare the 
' Swan of Avon ' ; that's plain enough in all conscience." 
No, not even that is without suspicion, for the Avon 
flows by Cheltenham, where Bacon had an estate, as 
well as by Stratford, at least so the Baconians say. I 
cannot vouch for the Cheltenham Avon myself ; all I 
know is that when I was at Cheltenham many years ago, 
I did not hear of any river Avon there, but of course 
there may be — Avons are common enough. 



CHAPTER VII 

PROGRESS AND PREJUDICE 

The preceding chapter on Ben Jonson and Shakespeare 
was written before Judge Webb's excellent book, The 
Mystery of William Shakespeare (1902), was published. 
I have since read that book carefully, and especially the 
chapter on Ben Jonson and Shakespeare. I was glad to 
find nothing to make me modify or alter what I had 
already written. 

There is nothing of the " crank " about Judge Webb, 
nor is it very likely there would be in a Regius Professor 
of Law. His arguments and pleas are carefully considered, 
and there is but one really bad mistake, as far as I can 
see, and that is, he thinks the " noted weed " allusion 
in Sonnet lxxiv. intimates that Shakespeare was not the 
author's real name. This interpretation cannot stand. 
But certainly such a well-timed, well-prepared, and well- 
directed blow has never before been given against the 
Shakespearian authorship of the Plays. But will this 
knock-down blow make the other side throw up the 
sponge and accept defeat cheerfully ? I augur nothing 
of the kind. I do not suppose the critics and the news- 
papers are likely to give up their pet traditions merely 
because some judge has cleverly arranged his words so 
as to tell against them. They have had experience of 
this kind of thing in the law-courts, and they know well 
enough how an experienced advocate can make the 
worse appear the better reason. Moreover, nearly all 
these arguments and facts have been before the world 
for the last twenty years or more, and have convinced no 
one but a few cranks. " Have not these same bricks been 
lying about the Baconian brick-fields for years and years 
for any to examine that cared to do it ; and now because 



io8 PROGRESS AND PREJUDICE 

a clever judge collects them together and presents us with 
a rather imposing edifice which he has made up from 
them, are we to be taken in by it ? " 

People who have strong views of their own and argue 
as above are not likely to be convinced. In Judge Webb's 
case it turned out as I thought ; all the critics and 
irresponsible reviewers attacked him at once. They all 
fastened their fangs on his one evident mistake, and 
having discharged the full venom of their rhetoric on 
that, they finished up by sneering and laughing at his 
carefully built edifice, treating it as a mere house of cards, 
with no solid foundation and no lasting cohesion. Having 
dislodged one of Judge Webb's cards or bricks, they 
assumed the airs of a conqueror who had brought the 
whole edifice to the ground in ruins. They scored the 
first point in the literary fight, and thought the fight was 
as good as finished. 

But many a literary pugilist gets the worst of the 
first round and yet proves after all the better man. I 
remember well, years ago, seeing and hearing Bradlaugh 
get a knock-down blow from Father Ignatius on the 
Hall of Science debating platform, Bradlaugh's own castle 
where he was king, somewhere in the City of London. 
The Anglican monk cleverly got S. Irenaeus into the argu- 
ment, and Bradlaugh, who would persist in calling the 
sainted bishop by the name of High-Reenyus, and evi- 
dently got quite at sea with regard to him, was clearly 
floored. But, though Bradlaugh lost this round in spite 
of (perhaps partly by reason of) his vigorous aspirations, 
he certainly scored a logical victory in the sum total of 
debate, as most of the audience admitted irrespective of 
their own convictions. It seems to me that when the 
whole controversy is properly thrashed out. Judge Webb, 
like Bradlaugh, will be shown to be the logical victor. 

One singular and useful result of this Regius Professor 
of Law appearing on the side of the Baconian heretics, 
has been the imposing spectacle of a triangular duel 
between three Professors — all of the same college and 
University, and all most distinguished in their several 



THE TRIANGULAR CONTEST 109 

capacities. As it helps to show that the Bacon-Shake- 
speare controversy is getting beyond the range of vulgar 
abuse, and as neither the irresponsible pressmen nor the 
cocksure experts are likely for their own reputation's 
sake to brand Regius Professors as fools or asses, I will 
give names and titles : — 

1. Tyrrell, Robert Yelverton, Regius Professor of Greek, 

Dublin, since 1880; Litt.D., LL.D., D.C.L., Fellow of 
Trin. Coll. Dubl., Professor of Latin, 187 1 ; Gold Medallist 
in Philosophy and Classics. 

2. DowDEN, Edward, Professor of English Literature, Dublin, 

since 1867 ; Litt.D., LL.D., D.C.L., Clark Lecturer in 
English Literature, Trin. Coll. Camb., 1893-96 ; Editor of 
Shakespeare' s Sonnets^ &c. &c. 

3. Webb, Thomas E., Regius Professor of Law, Dublin, 1867 ; 

Public Orator, 1879; Q.C. (1874), LL.D., Judge of the 
County Court of Donegal, and Chairman of Donegal 
Quarter Sessions since 1887. 

In the triangular duel. No. 3 fired the first shot in 
his Mystery of William Shakespeare, whereupon No. i, 
an inveterate theatre-goer and lover of the drama, and 
No. 2, an experienced Shakespearian critic, at once got 
their pistols ready and firing began in earnest. 

Professor Tyrrell (No. i) fired off three columns in 
The Pilot of July ig, 1902, finishing thus : " I would 
rather believe all the fables of the Talmud and Alcoran 
than that the author of the Novum Organum was the 
author of the plays and poems of Shakespeare." He uses 
the old arguments, and uses them very forcibly. He 
says that Bacon does not " show a scintilla of that humour 
with which Shakespeare bubbles and boils over. Con- 
ceive for a moment Bacon as the creator of Falstaff, 
Shallow, Dogberry, the gravedigger in Hamlet, and 
Launcelot Gobbo. It would be as easy to imagine Mr. 
Herbert Spencer as the author of Pickwick.'''' 

But in the course of his arguments he makes an 
admission which cuts the ground from under his feet. 
He thinks that " no candid reader can refuse to admit " 
that " the author of the Plays was very familiar with 



no PROGRESS AND PREJUDICE 

the works of Bacon, especially the Sylva Sylvarum and 
the Natural History, which were not published till after 
Shakespeare's death." He admits it himself, and accounts 
for such an extraordinary miracle of literature by the 
theory which he puts forth. " There is no reason why 
Shakespeare should not have known Bacon just as he 
knew the Earls of Southampton and Pembroke." So 
Judge Webb's coincidences are admitted, but they only 
show " that Shakespeare had access to the works of 
Bacon years before they were published." 

Judge Webb (No. 3) now fires his shot at No. i, and 
wellnigh disables him ; for, as the Judge rightly says, 
if the coincidences between Bacon and Shakespeare are 
admitted, then the strongest existing evidence that the 
Baconians have is also admitted, and that is quite enough 
for them. 

Meanwhile Professor Dowden (No. 2) has fired his 
shot, and has shown that there were really no coinci- 
dences between Bacon and Shakespeare in the sense 
that the Baconians required for their argument. Un- 
fortunately, this shot hit his own Shakespearian ally 
(No. i), and in The Pilot for Aug. 30 Professor Tyrrell 
(No. i) had to leave the field as best he could. This is 
how he does it. " When Lread that article (Prof. Dowden's 
shot) I would gladly have recalled my paper (his shot), 
but it was then too late. I am not versed in the literature 
of the Shakespearian era (a Litt.D. !), and I assumed 
that the Baconisers who adduced the parallelisms had 
satisfied themselves that the coincidences were peculiar 
to the writings of the Philosopher and the Poet. Pro- 
fessor Dowden showed that this was not so. . . . Thus 
my theories were completely superseded, and the one 
specious argument of the Baconisers demolished. . . . I, 
for one, have now said my last word on the Shakespeare- 
Bacon question." Exit Professor Tyrrell badly wounded 
by each of the other combatants, while Professors Dowden 
and Webb remain on the field still fighting. 

I am not a duellist on the field of the Plays, and 
therefore shall not attempt to occupy the corner of the 



A VESTED INTEREST iii 

triangle left vacant by Professor Tyrrell. But if my 
proofs of the authorship of the Poems and Sonnets be 
allowed, Professor Dowden will be in a hot position. 

There is hardly a more obstinate or difficult critic to 
convince or to reason with than the thoroughly ingrained 
scholar-critic who has been absorbing the traditional and 
orthodox views of any subject during the whole course 
of his life. The fact seems to be that the Shakespearian 
authorship has become a kind of " vested interest " in 
the eyes of the English-speaking race, and we all know 
how people hang on per fas et nefas to a vested interest. 
Critics have declared the " Divine William " to be the 
Eternal Glory of the British race, and their readers, high 
and low, rich and poor, one with another, have fully 
accepted this great treasure as their own by right and pre- 
scription ; and this has been going on for some hundreds 
of years. Here is a vested interest which dates back 
earlier than the licence of the oldest public-house in the 
kingdom. Can we be surprised that people fight for it ? 

As all the orthodox Shakespearians make so much of 
Ben Jonson's testimony, and are constantly repeating 
that " it settles the question," I made some more re- 
searches into Ben's life, and found a letter of his addressed 
to Lord Salisbury which was new to me. Gifford does 
not mention it in his Life, but it is published in the 
Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1603 to 1610, 
London, 1857. It is too long to quote, but it shows that 
Ben Jonson, who, when he wrote this letter, was a Roman 
Catholic, was quite willing to play the spy and informer 
among his fellow-Catholics, and covered this mean and 
detestable offer by the plea of patriotism justifying it. 
And what made him turn Roman Catholic ? Well, he 
was in prison, and, as he told Drummond afterwards, 
he was not convinced, but he " took the priest's word 
for it." But why should he, unless he was to get some- 
thing by doing so ? If so, what opinion must we hold 
of him ? Would he be a stickler for truth persistently, 
no matter when or where ? Is it not more probable 
that he would be just the kind of man who would be 



112 PROGRESS AND PREJUDICE 

easily induced by Bacon to assent to a suppressio veri if 
required of him. As for Bacon, no one who has any 
acquaintance with his " Life and Letters " would venture 
to deny that one of this great man's favourite literary 
devices was the suppressio veri combined with the 
suggestio falsi. Instances are very numerous, but one of 
the best that I can call to mind now is in a letter of Jan. 
28, 1616, when the King had asked Bacon's advice re- 
garding the attack by Coke on the Lord Chancellor's 
(Ellesmere) jurisdiction over cases decided at the King's 
Bench. Bacon replied : " I do think it most necessary, 
seeing there is some bruit abroad that the Court of King's 
Bench do doubt of the case, that it should not be treason, 
that it be given out constantly, and yet as it were in 
secret, and so a fame to slide, that the doubt was only 
upon the publication in that it was never published." 

Now, I hold that a man who could so ingeniously 
advise how to throw dust in the eyes of the public, and 
how to circulate false reports, would not have much diffi- 
culty in doing the same in the case of the first folio, 
and would do it with greater gusto and care, as it was 
here a personal matter. What I wish to emphasise is 
that since Ben Jonson and Francis Bacon were both 
wonderfully shrewd men, and held the peculiar views as to 
truth described above, we should not reject as a " mon- 
strous impossibility " the view that between them they 
succeeded in deceiving the world of letters as to the 
authorship of the first folio for several hundred years. 

Nor must we forget that the Dedication and Address 
over the signatures of Heminge and Condell, fellow- 
actors with Shakespeare, are both open to grave suspicion 
and serious objections. Here too we cannot marry the 
style to the men. The phraseology differs much from 
what we should expect from ordinary actors. It has been 
plausibly suggested by such high authorities as the Cam- 
bridge editors, that both the Dedication and the Address 
may have been written by some literary man in the em- 
plo5nTient of the publishers, and merely signed by the 
two players. This seems probable enough, and in that 



LITERARY CHICANERY 113 

case I should suggest Edward Blount as a very likely 
man. But there are strong internal indications of a 
well-read Latinist and good classical scholar, which seem 
to point beyond these ordinary players and Blount also, 
and lead us to think rather of Ben Jonson. For there is 
a curious passage concerning " country hands that reach 
forth milk and cream and fruits," that is evidently taken 
from the dedicatory epistle to Vespasian, prefixed to 
Pliny's Natural History, and is an independent scholarly 
translation such as we might expect from Jonson rather 
than any one else. What would Heminge and Condell 
be likely to know of such a passage ? Blount, who had 
a fancy for dedications and prefaces, might have come 
across it and kept it for his own future use, but not men 
like Heminge and Condell. Judge Webb mentions this 
part of their prefatory matter as being unlike the phrase- 
ology we should expect from them, but did not notice the 
peculiar classical source I have given above, although 
he refers to another passage of the Address which he re- 
gards as conclusive for the Jonsonian authorship. How- 
ever that may be, I claim we are fully entitled to say 
that there is strong evidence of some literary chicanery 
in this part of the vestibule of the first folio, where Heminge 
and Condell give their signatures and evidence. This 
being so, we have a corroboration of the literary chicanery 
we have suspected in the other parts of this famous 
vestibule, and it becomes much easier to hold the opinion 
that this vestibule was originally arranged " to oblige 
Bacon " and to conceal him. That is, I confess, my own 
conviction on this debated point, and I rather fancy that 
Blount and Jaggard were mixed up with it as well as 
Jonson. 

Look again at the secret of the " Waverley Novels." 
It should teach us a lesson surely. There were several 
shrewd guesses at the right author, but they were re- 
pressed somewhat in the way that the shrewd Baconian 
suggestions are repressed. People were hoodwinked by 
what was considered " good authority," and this lasted 
several years. The Ettrick Shepherd says, in his Auto- 

H 



114 PROGRESS AND PREJUDICE 

biography, that when he saw certain words about long 
and short sheep used near the beginning of The Black 
Dwarf, he said to himself : " How could I be mistaken 
of the author ? It is true Johnnie Ballantyne persuaded 
me into a nominal belief of the contrary for several years 
following, but I could never get the better of that and 
several similar coincidences." For Johnnie Ballantyne 
read Ben Jonson, and we have the very kind of influence 
that produces nominal belief in Shakespeare's authorship. 
J. B. and B. J. were both in a tale for throwing dust in 
the eyes of the inquisitive and curious public, and both 
succeeded, B. J. holding his tale up even to the present 
day. 

But why, after all, are Baconians treated so discourte- 
ously ? I suppose it is because they are heretics, and 
because the firm believers in the cult of the " Divine 
William " do actually feel that their higher religious 
instincts are being impudently trifled with. Bacon en- 
throned as our literary Paragon and Deity ? Never ! 
'Tis flat blasphemy as ever was committed. Away with 
such cranks ! nothing is too bad for them ! I am re- 
minded of a famous utterance of Dr. Wace (D.D.) before 
the Church Congress of 1888 : " It is," he said, " and it 
ought to be, an unpleasant thing for a man to have to 
say plainly that he does not believe in Jesus Christ." 
Many people nowadays seem to hold the same views as 
to disbelief in Shakespeare, and the attempts to dis- 
enthrone him from his lofty position. Such is the 
view of the more ordinary man who plods to his work 
along the public thoroughfares of our cities and towns. 
He knows hardly anything of the subject, and cares less. 
As to the orthodox Shakespearians of cultivated tastes, 
the heresy is to them " literature of a peculiarl}'' unin- 
viting kind," as they often say. Naturally so, for it 
upsets all their past ideas on the subject ; throws ridicule 
on all their beautiful devotion to " Sweetest Shakespeare, 
Fancy's child," and the " native wood-notes wild," 
which they fondly imagined he had learned to " warble " 
in Warwickshire ; and, perhaps worst of all, leaves one 



A HINT TO ZOILUS 115 

of their special shrines positively empty. No substituted 
image can fill that shrine, for it is against human nature 
to blot out the lifelong devotion that has been bestowed 
on one great literary ideal, and then to transfer it restored 
to another idol or ideal of a very different description. 

Appeals to Zoilus are quite out of date nowadays, but 
I will frankly say this : that, if any slashing critics or 
snarling cynics try to make matters " unpleasant " for me, 
I in turn will suffer them gladly. If they " grin like a 
dog " I too will grin — and bear it. 



CHAPTER VIII 

SOME ORTHODOX SHAKESPEARIANS PUT IN THE 
WITNESS-BOX 

At this point it seems only fair to listen to the Shake- 
spearians, who, no doubt, have for some time been mutter- 
ing audi alteram partem. I will therefore now put Sir 
Theodore Martin, who is one of their best and most 
courteous and amiable witnesses, into the box and report 
his evidence. It is also to be read in Blackwood'' s 
Magazine (1888). He says : — 

"Have they (the Baconians) ever tried to picture to them- 
selves what was the position of an actor and dramatic writer in a 
theatre of those days ? By necessity he was in daily communion 
with some of the sharpest and finest intellects of the time — men 
like Marlowe, Dekker, Chapman, Middleton, Heywood, Drayton, 
and Ben Jonson. We might as soon believe that a man who pre- 
tended that he had written Vanity Fair or Esmond could have 
escaped detection in the society of Charles Butler, Tennyson, 
Venables, or James Spedding, as that Shakespeare could have 
passed himself off as the author even of The Two Gentlemen of 
Verona or Lovis Labour's Lost — we purposely name two of his 
earliest and weakest plays — or that any of that brilliant circle of 
Elizabethan poets would have given credit for ten minutes to such 
a man as the Baconians picture Shakespeare to have been for the 
capacity to construct one scene, or even to compose ten con- 
secutive lines of the blank verse — the exquisite blank verse which 
is to be found in those plays." 

This is excellently put, and has convinced in its time 
thousands of sensible people. But it is a fallacious argu- 
ment after all. We have no reason to believe that 
Shakespeare ever did manage to deceive those people 
who were in the best position to judge. I do not think 

that he deceived Ben Jonson, or Greene, or Marston, or 

X16 



SIR THEODORE MARTIN 117 

Dekker, or Henslowe, or the actors of his own company, 
for one moment. They knew him as an adapter of old 
plays, and no doubt he could from his stage experience 
make them very presentable to the audience ; he knew 
the popular taste, and had a " facetious grace of writing." 
This I think we must allow him. It was the saying of 
an impartial contemporary, and there is no reason it 
should not be accepted. But he was a " broker " of 
plays, and either bought or appropriated other people's 
feathers to add to his own natural plumage. If those 
who knew charged him with it, it did not seem to trouble 
him ; he " slighted " it,* and took it all in the day's work, 
so long as it brought him money and success, for he was 
a careful man, with a good eye to the main chance. I 
think he was generally credited with the poems Venus 
and Adonis and Lucrece, and very likely he claimed and 
maintained his authorship there, for he had put his name 
to the dedication ; and there may have been other 
reasons why he should do this, reasons best known to 
Bacon, Southampton, and himself. But I maintain, as 
against Sir Theodore Martin's apparently weighty argu- 
ment, that his contemporaries, who, from their position 
and relation to him, ought to know, were not deceived, 
nor did Shakespeare try to deceive them. Shakespeare 
as the promoter and producer to the public of a number 
of popular and successful plays. They were pirated and 
printed without his collaboration and without his autho- 
rity. Some had his name put to them, and some had 
not. He did not trouble much, so long as the money 
came in to the theatre, and possibly there was a private 
arrangement with the real " inventor," who did not care 
to be publicly associated with them. A new play was 
acted by his company ; he was known to be the active 
factotum, and so, when successful and put in print by the 
speculative booksellers, it was attributed to him — often, 
too, when it was not his at all. He was no dunce, and 
had sufficient natural quickness and flow of language 

* I assume that Ben Jonson's "Poet-Ape" was Shakespeare. The 
evidence seems very strong to me. 



ii8 SHAKESPEARIANS IN THE WITNESS-BOX 

and facetious grace to impress outsiders, and people who 
were not great critics (as Ben Jonson really was), that he 
was quite equal to producing the marvellous beauties of 
Hamlet, Lear, and the rest, because for one reason they 
were not at that time perceived to be such marvellous 
creations as the verdict of after ages has decreed. 

But enough has been said to show that Sir Theodore's 
argument is not by any means so convincing as it at first 
appears to be. However, let us now hear another 
champion on the Shakespearian side. Allow me to intro- 
duce Professor Alfred Russel Wallace, a man of the 
keenest and most original intellect, an LL.D. and F.R.S., 
a competitor with Darwin for the honour of discovering 
Natural Selection, and one of the sanest defenders of 
modern Spiritualism in the matter of its evidential proof 
that we have had in this country. The occasion of his 
testimony was this. The Arena, a high-class American 
periodical, some years ago invited the opinions and verdict 
of distinguished men on the Shakespeare-Bacon problem. 
I need hardly say that the general result was an almost 
unanimous verdict for Shakespeare. As the Arena is not 
much known in England, and as Professor Wallace gave 
stronger reasons, perhaps, than any one else, they may 
suitably find a place here. 

" When we are asked to believe that the whole of the plays 
and poems attributed to Shakespeare were not written by him, 
but by Lord Bacon, we naturally require evidence of the most 
convincing kind. It must be shown either that Bacon did 
actually write them, or that Shakespeare could not possibly have 
written them, in which latter case somebody else must have 
done so ; and we then demand proof that Bacon could possibly, 
and did probably write them. 

"First, then, is there any good evidence that Bacon did 
write them ? Positively none whatever : only a number of vague 
hints and suggestions which might perhaps add some weight to 
an insufifiicient amount of direct testimony, but in its absence are 
entirely valueless ; and then we have the enormous, the over- 
whelming improbability, that any man would write, and allow to 
be published or acted, so wonderful a series of poems and plays, 



PROFESSOR A. R. WALLACE 119 

while another man received all the honour and all the profits ; 
and though surviving that man for ten years, that the real author 
never made the slightest claim to them, never confided the 
secret to a single friend, and died without a word or a sign to 
show that he had any part or share in them. To most persons 
this consideration alone will be conclusive against Bacon's 
authorship. 

" The reasons for Shakespeare not being able to write them 
are weak in the extreme. They amount to this : 

1. He had no University education. 

2. His early associates were mostly illiterate. 

3. No single letter or MS. exists in his writing. 

" But ' transcendent genius ' is sufficient to remove all such 
difficulties. Moreover, he lived near to the lordly castles of 
Warwick and Kenilworth, and 'at times of festivity such castles 
were open house, and at all times would be accessible through 
the friendship of servants or retainers ; and thus it may be that 
Shakespeare acquired some portion of that knowledge of the 
manners and speech of nobles and kings which appears in the 
historical plays.' 

" The endearing terms applied to him by his London friends 
after he had left Stratford show he was an attractive personality, 
and we may therefore infer he was acceptable in many grades of 
society. The law-courts were open ; he would there have ample 
opportunities of getting that knowledge displayed in the plays ; 
and as for French and Spanish, he could easily pick up from his 
travelled friends or from foreign visitors enough for his purpose. 

"Lastly, putting Shakespeare out of the way, could Bacon 
have written the plays, &c. ? No ; the man who wrote the 
Essays on * Love ' and ' Marriage,' and did not allow one spark 
of love or sentiment to appear in them, could not possibly have 
conceived and delineated such characters as Portia, Juliet, 
Imogen, and a score of others, not to speak of the 'pouring 
forth of the soul ' in the Sonnets. 

"Never, surely, was there so utterly baseless a claim as that 
made by the advocates of Bacon against Shakespeare. 

" A. R. Wallace. 

"Verdict for the defendant — Shakespeare." 

This verdict is given as strongly and as tersely as the 
most devoted Shakespearian could wish. As the reader 
has already seen, and will, I hope, continue to see further 



I20 SHAKESPEARIANS IN THE WITNESS-BOX 

on, I do not leave such arguments unconsidered. There- 
fore I will now simply refer to the argument of the Pro- 
fessor that Bacon was not the man to " conceive or 
delineate such characters as Portia, Juliet, Imogen," nor 
yet the man to pour forth his soul in the Sonnets. At 
first sight the argument seems insuperable, and the 
incongruity of such a philosophical and serious brain as 
that of Bacon evolving the marvellous lovers' ecstasies of 
Romeo and Juliet, together with the pure, graceful, bright 
and lovable maidens that meet us in the various plays, 
must seem to most people so enormous and so insuperable 
that it is to some extent an excuse for the unrestrained 
language they use to those who think differently. 

No, Bacon was most distinctly not the kind of man 
we should credit with the creation of a Juliet, a Portia, 
a Beatrice, or a Rosalind. I admit the statement and 
agree with Professor Wallace's remarks on this point, but 
I would add a saving clause. I would say, " Bacon is 
impossible, as we know him."" In his mature life Bacon 
is known to the world of culture as a deep-thinking and 
far-reaching philosopher, a most wise and suggestive 
essayist, a sane, serious, sober-minded man, and apparently 
somewhat of a misogynist and a time-server. But what 
of his youthful days, when he was in the heyday of spring 
and of " sportive b'ood " ; what of the time before he 
was on the shady side of thirty-five or forty ; how much 
do the best of us, or even the wellnigh omniscient 
Spedding, know intimately of his inner life and emotional 
feelings then ? He did not publish anything with his 
name of much importance till his Essays in 1598, when 
he was nearly forty years old, and his greater works were 
reserved till he was nearly sixty. Are we to judge his 
natural bias and his emotional instincts solely by such 
records as are left us in this way ? Maturity is not often 
wont to lay bare the secrets and follies of its undisciplined 
and inexperienced youth ; nay, rather it is apt to conceal 
or obscure them. Moreover, his Essays on Love and 
Marriage were not in the first edition of 1598, and did 
not appear till 1612, when Bacon was over fifty, and were 



BACON ON LOVE 121 

not finally put into shape till 1625, when he was sixty- 
four. We must not expect the exuberance and florid 
rhetoric of the tender passion at such ages of life ; but 
among much excellent advice we get this : " Nuptial 
Love maketh mankind ; Friendly Love perfecteth it ; 
but Wanton Love corrupteth and imbaseth it.'' 

In the friendly love that is the perfection of the great 
passion, may there not be a reminiscence of the ardours 
of the Sonnets ? Anyhow, the Siren is there in the essay 
{cf. " What potions have I drunk of Siren tears ? " 
Sonnet cxix.), and Marcus Antonius too, the hero of 
Antony and Cleopatra ; and he is the only lover named 
in the essay except Appius Claudius, the Decemvir. And 
so I say to Professor Wallace and all who rely on this 
apparently invincible argument, " Be not too dogmatic 
concerning that portion of Bacon's life and history of 
which we know so little intimately ; your invincible argu- 
ment may after all be nothing but invincible ignorance." 

And after all, what are Juliet, Beatrice, or Miranda, 
but creations of the fine human intellect which a genius 
can throw off from himself into space, and then embody 
them, so to speak, in the domain of the intellectual and 
literary world ; but it does not necessarily follow that 
they represent any actual analogies to the personal char- 
acter of the genius who created them. Just as a man 
" may smile, and smile, and be a villain," so, I suppose, 
an author may produce the sublimest and purest con- 
ceptions of the human mind without being so very sublime 
and pure in his own personal and intimate life. A man's 
lofty conceptions, and pure aspirations, do not necessarily 
find a counterpart in himself, " Colonel Newcome " is 
a beautiful conception, a fine character, but I don't 
suppose that Thackeray much resembled him. 

Besides this, the emotional, the sensual, and the spiri- 
tual natures of men and women, be they great or small, 
vary considerably at different stages of their life. Look at 
Milton, for instance, and compare him in youth and middle 
age, in regard to his expressed views on the master pas- 
sion love and the fair sex generally. If ever there was a 



122 SHAKESPEARIANS IN THE WITNESS-BOX 

chaste, serious, and self-respecting man, a severe student 
delighting in books, Milton was that man, and yet in the 
heyday of youthful emotion, and in the spring of life, 
what does he tell us of his first love, that girl he met, 
above and surpassing all her accompanying troop, on 
that long-remembered May Day in 1628, when he was 
but nineteen ? Then it was that Dan Cupid drew his 
bow at a venture and smote the unsuspecting youth and 
pierced his unguarded breast : 

" Nee mora ; nunc ciliis hsesit, nunc virginis ori, 
Insilit hinc labiis, insidet inde genis ; 
Et quascunque agilis partes jaculator oberrat, 
Hei mihi ! mille locis pectus inerme ferit ;" 

which Cowper translates unapproachably, 

" [With . . . quiver at his side,] 
Now to her lips he clung, her eyelids now. 
Then settled on her cheeks, or on her brow, 
And with a thousand wounds from every part 
Pierced and transpierced my undefended heart. 
A fever, new to me, of fierce desire 
Now seized my soul, and I was all on fire." 

But later on in life, in 1645, when Milton was approach- 
ing forty, he would not put in print his youthful effusion 
without a demurrer or antidote, and so he appends his 
altered views when he was more matured, in the follow- 
ing fashion : 

" Such were the trophies that in earlier days, 
By vanity seduced, I toiled to raise, 
Studious, yet indolent, and urged by youth, 
That worst of teachers ! from the ways of truth : 
Till learning taught me in his shady bow'r, 
To quit love's servile yoke, and spurn his pow'r." 

And why may not this have been young Francis 
Bacon's case as well ? When that fair Adonis, that 
eminent " child of state," the attractive young Earl of 
Southampton, came up about the year 1590 to be the 
young cherub of Gray's Inn, what more likely than 
that a " fever of fierce desire " should seize the soul of 
that more experienced and naturally sensitive member 



BACON'S EARLY LEVITY 123 

of [the same Society, Francis Bacon ? with whom, as 
we know, an early and long-continued intimacy sprung 
up. Some of the Shake-speare Sonnets show us, as only 
impassioned poetry can, a soul that was " all on fire," 
and the Cupid that supplied the torch is generally ad- 
mitted to be this same young Earl. Does it not seem 
more probable that the author of these Sonnets was one 
who was fitted by birth, position at Gray's Inn, and 
opportunities of many kinds to enter into an ardent and 
romantic attachment to his young friend — all which 
qualifications are fulfilled to the letter in Francis Bacon 
— rather than the bourgeois lad from the country, William 
Shakespeare, who had about this time just risen from 
the stable-yard of old Burbage to do hack-work with old 
plays, and was perhaps honoured sometimes with the role 
of the original Ghost in the Ur-Hamlet of Thomas Kyd, 
which used to cry out, to the terror of the penny and 
twopenny sections of the audience, " Hamlet, revenge." 

Bacon, like Milton, became devoted to more serious 
matters as life rolled on, and put aside the ecstasies and 
fancies, the " watching and pursuing the light that lies 
in woman's eyes," and that friendship for youth which 
he thought at one time to be the perfecting of love. 
Those spring days had passed. For " one hour " at least 
he had enjoyed spring's most glorious sun ; but now the 
autumn had come, and he sat and thought {sic sedehat), 
and possessed with a philanthropy for his race and for 
posterity, he devised his new schemes of Philosophy and 
Natural Science, and left them and the other works of 
his invention that he had devised in a " despised weed " 
for the good of all men, and for future ages. From what 
Sir Thomas Bodley said about Bacon in later life, we 
may almost infer that Bacon had wasted (according to 
the Bodley view of the matter) much of his youth in 
frivolous literary work, such as plays and interludes, 
which Sir Thomas rigorously excluded from his famous 
Library. 

Once more, then, and finally, the argument that Bacon 
could not possibly have depicted the love scenes and 



124 SHAKESPEARIANS IN THE WITNESS-BOX 

Das Ewig-W eibliche of the Plays does not seem an in- 
vincible one. 

I will next introduce one of the most experienced 
Shakespearians we have amongst us, as far as practical 
exposition is concerned — I mean, of course, Sir Henry 
Irving. 

He has just been delivering the " Trask " lecture at 
Princeton University (March 1902), and he took the 
Bacon-Shakespeare question for his subject. He ap- 
proached the matter from the point of view of the actor 
mainly, taking up two principal points. First, is it con- 
ceivable that Shakespeare's contemporaries would have 
allowed him to masquerade in borrowed plumes ? Even 
as it was, Robert Greene was jealous of him, and called 
him " the upstart crow beautified with our feathers." 
Greene would have been only too glad to expose Shake- 
speare, had there been anything to expose. Secondly, it 
is equally as inconceivable that Bacon wrote the Plays, 
as that Shakespeare did not write them. They are the 
work of a practical playwright, conversant with all the 
business of the actor ; and Bacon is not known to have 
had any knowledge of the stage. " If," said Sir Henry, 
" you have not studied the art of writing for the stage, 
you will never write a good play." 

I must say I am astounded at the inaccurate state- 
ments which the newspapers have here given to Sir Henry, 
and would hope that he has been incorrectly reported. 
Surely all who have only read a little way into the sub- 
ject know that (i) Shakespeare was charged over and 
over again at the time with patching up old plays, with 
dressing himself up for the public in borrowed plumes, 
and for " brokerage " or buying literary property from 
outsiders ; and that (2) Bacon was known to be well 
acquainted with the practical work of getting up masques 
and plays at Gray's Inn, and was, to his mother's sorrow, 
a frequenter and lover of the theatre. 

The Globe newspaper, commenting favourably on Sir 
Henry, goes a step further than the lecture, by stating 
that when Shakespeare " employed legal terms, he is 



KEATS NO PARALLEL CASE 125 

often wrong," and that " it is, in short, abundantly clear 
that the author was not a lawyer." 
To which we can only say : 

" O ye chorus of indolent reviewers, 
Irresponsible, indolent reviewers." 

Next take this good leading trump card from the 
other side : " Keats, though minus education in Greek, 
yet through the genius within him caused his poetry to 
be saturated with the spirit of Greek mythology ; and 
shall we deny to Shakespeare a similar transmuting 
power of genius, even on the assumption of a limited 
Latin scholarship ? " 

I do not know who first said this, but it has been 
often repeated, and with most Shakespearians decies 
repetita placehit. I admit its prima facie force and 
congruity, but fortunately we know much more about 
young Keats than about young Shakespeare of Stratford. 
Therefore let us, for the sake of comparison, hear what 
is known of Keats. He was sent in his eighth year to a 
school of excellent repute kept by John Clarke at Enfield. 
He gained the friendship of Charles Cowden Clarke, the 
master's son, and an usher of the school, and during his 
last two years the love of study so seized him that he 
could be hardly torn from his books, not only winning 
all the literary prizes of the school, but devouring during 
play-hours everything he could lay his hands on, especially 
classical mythology. He carried away from school a fair 
knowledge of Latin, and apparently a little knowledge 
of French, which he afterwards improved. He made 
plenty of spare time for himself in his teens and after- 
wards, and relinquished the profession of surgery and 
medicine for more congenial pursuits. He had many 
talented friends to stimulate him. Books were within his 
reach, to be consulted at pleasure. 

Now compare Keats' works, their author being thus 
favourably handicapped, with Shakespeare's works. I 
can see neither wide learning nor philosophical knowledge 
in Keats, but I can see both in Shakespeare. I can see 
in Keats' works how he was enabled by his innate genius 



126 SHAKESPEARIANS IN THE WITNESS-BOX 

to " build the lofty rhyme " and to produce most ex- 
quisite flowers of the finest poetry, from the groundwork, 
so to speak, of Lempriere and the current treatises on 
mythology, thoroughly mastered by a willing and inter- 
ested reader. But when I see this splendid result, I do 
not view it as a miracle, or the man himself as stupor 
mundi. His natural genius and the special tendency of 
his mind would be sufficient, without a miracle. 

But how very different in the case of Shakespeare. 
We do not know much about his educational advantages ; 
but, taking the most favourable view, they could hardly be 
superior to those that were afforded to Keats. And yet 
where can there be found a man of wider, and, as a rule, 
more accurate knowledge, or of a greater vocabulary, or 
of a more beautiful or philosophical way of using it ? 

Genius can do much, but it is far from being able to 
make a man omnibus numeris absolutus, or " complete " 
in the sense that Shakespeare was. Genius alone can 
undoubtedly lift a man to a purer and a larger aether 
than ordinary mortals can breathe in. Instances are 
numerous enough in the annals of many a cottage home 
and lowly birthplace, but these self-same favoured mortals, 
even if, as with Milton, they could hope to soar 

" Above the flight of Pegasean wing," 

still would soon find that their wings of genius are sadly 
clipped, confined, and weakened unless they are taught 
to rise and fly by the knowledge that is in books and by 
the varied wisdom that has descended from the ages of 
the past. Without these helps they may indeed rise 
somewhat from the brute earth of ordinary humanity, 
but they will never be able to make those glorious circling 
swoops in the lofty " circumambient air " which are ever 
the wonder of the earth-bound crowd below, the marvel 
of an admiring world. 

Such an ever-living stupor mundi is Shakespeare — but 
not Keats, nor yet Burns, nor James Ferguson, as Notes 
and Queries would suggest when their critic remarks, 
"It is only in degree that Shakespeare is more of a 



HAD BACON HUMOUR? 127 

miracle than Bums or than James Ferguson." I cannot 
accept such a statement as this. The miracle of the 
Shakespeare Works is a different kind of miracle from 
that of Bums, or Ferguson, or Keats. Theirs is really 
after all no miracle, for they only went where their 
genius led them. But Shakespeare went where no 
natural genius ever did or ever could lead a man, and 
that is the miracle we are asked to believe. Put Bacon 
in Shakespeare's place, the miracle disappears and a 
much easier problem awaits us. And as it is a good 
standing rule, both in theology and common sense, that 
we should never multiply miracles if we can by any possi- 
bility find other explanations of a fairly satisfactory kind, 
I adopt the rule and accept Bacon until the other side 
give me a downright miracle to swallow in his case, and 
then he must go too, for miracles do not happen now 
either in the literarj' or physical worlds. But I must 
have a real miracle, better than any they have on their 
books at present. 

I once had the privilege of a short casual conversation 
with one of the most distinguished Shakespearian scholars 
that England possesses. The Bacon theory being men- 
tioned tentatively, I well remember his curt and decisive 
reply : " Absurd ! Why, Bacon never wrote a humorous 
line in his life." At the time, coming as it did vivd voce 
from such an authority, it appeared to me very convincing, 
and for a moment or two T seemed to feel certain that 
whatever Bacon wrote, he did not write the humours of 
Sir John Falstaff. Even still I often feel inclined to 
credit the Stratford man with some of the incidents and 
characters in the Falstaff plays. But the great critic's 
casual remark was not so strong as it sounds ; for, allow- 
ing the assertion to be accurate, there still remains plenty 
of evidence that Bacon was a natural humorist, and very 
fond of indulging his vein. Ben Jonson, best of con- 
temporary witnesses, declared : " His (Francis Bacon's) 
language, when he could spare, or pass by, a jest, was hotly 
censorious ; " and Dr. Abbott, one of the best of Bacon's 
modem biographers, said : "If Francis owed his energy 



128 SHAKESPEARIANS IN THE WITNESS-BOX 

to his mother, he was probably indebted to his father for 
his placid self-control and his rich humour.'''' Such re- 
marks discount considerably the value of the statement 
that, for the moment, rather nonplussed me. 

I could go on and fill many pages with amusing and 
ridiculous extracts from the books and pamphlets of the 
privates, camp-followers, and facetious buffoons of the 
orthodox army. But it would take up too much space, 
and would not strengthen my own case, which is the main 
object to strive for. They spare not invective, they seem 
to think us all lunatics, and call us all the ridiculous 
names they can invent. I wish some one would invent 
one for them. When modem critics call the Bacon-Shake- 
speare theory a craze of semi-educated people, and a 
theory that is absolutely irrational, one hardly knows by 
what nickname to hit off such people. They certainly 
deserve one, and one that would stick to them. Perhaps 
some sympathetic reader will supply one. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE PROOFS OF BACONIAN AUTHORSHIP AS DEDUCED FROM 
THE HISTORY OF THE THREE PROMINENT ELIZABETHAN 
EARLS — SOUTHAMPTON, PEMBROKE, AND ESSEX 

Having thus, for a change, heard some of the best Shake- 
spearian champions in their own words, let us proceed 
with our own case. 

Our next piece of evidence will depend upon three 
celebrated English noblemen — Henry Wriothesley, Earl 
of Southampton, William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and 
the unfortunate favourite of Queen Elizabeth, Robert 
Devereux, Earl of Essex. These three men, of the 
highest aristocracy of the land, were all on terms of 
special intimacy with Francis Bacon. That is an historical 
fact which is not disputed, and does not admit of dispute. 
It is also said that the first two noblemen were most 
closely bound by friendship and patronage to William 
Shakespeare, the poet-actor and part shareholder and 
manager of the Globe Theatre, and that the third noble- 
man was also, though more slightly, connected both with 
the Globe Theatre and its plays. But these latter in- 
timacies with the actor-manager, which are of prime neces- 
sity for the Shakespearian orthodox theory, have been much 
disputed in the near past, and are being more strongly 
challenged every day in the present, and their force as an 
historical fact is being slowly but surely weakened. 

The Bacon-Shakespeare controversy will revolve more 
and more round these three historic personages, so it 
seems to me. The future battlefield for the literary 
combatants will be the ground of the Sonnets and the 
Poems, and especially the respective territories (or 
counties) of Pembroke, Southampton, and Essex. 

Strange to say, neither Southampton nor Pembroke 
129 I 



ISO PROOFS OF BACONIAN AUTHORSHIP 

occurs in the index of what is perhaps the most convincing 
and important work of the whole controversy — a work of 
which the seventh edition revised (1897) is now lying 
before me, I mean " Bacon versus Shakespeare,'''' by Edwin 
Reed, member of the Shakespeare Society of New York 
(pp. xxiv-296). But I hope to show now that these 
names, and their connection with the history and lives of 
Bacon and Shakespeare, are of the utmost importance 
as throwing light on the real author of the Sonnets and 
Poems and thence by inference of the Plays as well. 

First, let us collect in as compact a bundle as possible 
the evidences and inferences that Shakespearians have 
given us [fas est et ah hoste doceri) of these young noble- 
men and their connection with the Sonnets. I assume, 
in agreement with the most eminent Shakespearian 
critics, that the Sonnets contain a partial autobiography 
of their writer, and I think I am justified in so doing. To 
take a merely symbolical, allegorical, or idealistic view of 
the Sonnets leads us anywhere or rather nowhere, and is 
contradicted very plainly by the author accusing him- 
self of scandals and misdemeanours, a thing unheard of 
and without a parallel in this ethereal kind of literature. 
To make somewhat plainer this strange alternative theory 
of the Sonnets, I will quote a letter which one of these 
expositors has quite recently (March 22, 1902) written to 
The Speaker : — 

" In the Sonnets the ideal of Beauty, Truth, and Love, as an 
operative ' grace ' (so the poet calls it) manifesting itself in his 
art, life, and love, is by him identified with his spirit or higher 
and truer self, and at the same time with the All of Nature. 
Thus Shakespeare in the Sonnets figures as one with the Ideal 
or Spirit, and the All of Nature." 

If we wish to discover the real author, we shall have to 
tread on firmer ground than this. I think we can. 

To begin with, we may state, as a matter of common 
knowledge now, that the great majority of the mysterious 
Shakespeare Sonnets are addressed to a high-born and 
beautiful young man, apparently a mere lad when some 



MR. HERAUD'S OPINION! 131 

of them were written. The smaller number of Sonnets 
are addressed, or have reference to a woman, generally- 
known by critics as the Dark Lady of the Sonnets. " A 
woman coloured ill," a " female evil," not of the best 
reputation for strict chastity. To show that the word 
" mysterious " used above is justly applied to these 
poems, we have only to remember that for many years 
after they were first published, they were all supposed to 
be addressed to a woman, young and beautiful ; and even 
as late as 1797 Chalmers endeavoured to show that this 
was none other than Queen Elizabeth, although her 
Majesty must have been close upon sixty years of age 
when the Sonnets were commenced. Coleridge thought 
the person addressed was a woman, and that Sonnet xx. 
and others, which speak so evidently of a man, were put 
in as a blind. Many other solutions more or less absurd 
have appeared in print for the last hundred years or more, 
and many still appear in the course of every few years. 

The first critic who deserves the credit of directing 
the public to what is now generally believed to be 
the true solution, and of naming the right young man, 
was Dr. Drake, who in his excellent work, Shakespeare 
an djiis Times (1817), conjectured that Henry Wriothesley, 
Earl of Southampton, was the friend of Shakespeare who 
was addressed so affectionately in the Sonnets, as well as 
inscribed so lovingly in the dedication to his poems. Of 
course he was met in the later Sonnets by the difficulty 
that the adored friend's name was clearly Will, that is 
William, while Southampton's name was Henry ; but he 
easily managed to get over this slight discrepancy, by 
announcing his entire conviction that the later Sonnets 
were not written to a real object at all ! And a Mr, 
Heraud, a rather famous critic in his day, says : " After 
a careful re-perusal I have come to the conclusion that 
there is not a single Sonnet which is addressed to any 
individual at all." * 

But enough of such barren surmises, which could 
easily be recounted in detail so as to fill more than an 

* Shakespeare, his Inner Life, by J. A. Heraud, London, 1865. 



132 PROOFS OF BACONIAN AUTHORSHIP 

hundred pages ; I only refer to them here to show what 
a mysterious, difficult, and thorny subject critics have 
always found the Sonnets to be. 

A Mr. Tyler attempted a new explanation in 1890, 
and was so very ingenious and successful that for a time 
he deceived the very elect ; and Mr. Sidney Lee believed, 
with many other most distinguished Shakespearians, that 
the right man was a William, the Mr. W. H. of the dedica- 
tion, and none other than William Herbert, Earl of Pem- 
broke, and that the Dark Lady was Mistress Mary Fitton, 
maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth, a prominent performer 
in the Court masques and interludes, the secret, illicit 
mistress of William Shakespeare, William Herbert, and two 
or three other Wills, and the mother of a base-born child 
of which William Herbert was the putative father. 

Mr. Tyler's very convincing book held the field for 
some years, and I believe some able Shakespearians stiU 
swear by his interpretation. It is certainly a learned and 
able attempt to throw light upon a very dark subject, 
one especially dark for all those who hold the Shake- 
spearian hypothesis. Some points connected with the 
Dark Lady and her numerous " Wills " do seem much 
elucidated, and some novel evidence is given which, I 
believe, still holds good. But when the question of dates 
comes to be looked into, this William Herbert theory 
utterly comes to grief for the majority of the earlier 
Sonnets. It can be made very plain in this way : William 
Herbert was born April 8, 1580. Now the first seventeen 
Sonnets, or, as they are sometimes called, " The Pro- 
creation Sonnets " (c. 1592-3), are a strong appeal to a 
lovely youth to marry and beget a child that may repro- 
duce and recall the fair lineaments of his father should 
death rob the world of such beauty : 

" Make thee another self, for love of me, 
That beauty still may live in thine and thee." 

— Sonnet X. 

Cf. Venus and Adonis, 173, 174 : 

" And so in spite of death thou dost survive, 
In that thy likeness still is left alive." 



A QUESTION OF DATES 133 

But how can this possibly be young WilHam Herbert ? 
For these seventeen belong indubitably to a period when 
he was only about eleven, or at very most twelve or 
thirteen years old. 

I cannot give the whole evidence here, nor would any 
reader thank me if I tried, for it is internal evidence of a 
complicated but most positive kind. By a careful com- 
parison of the language, tone and parallelisms, and char- 
acters of the Sonnets and early Plays and Poems, especially 
Ve?ms and Adonis, Love's Labour's Lost, Romeo and Juliet, 
and others of those so-called Shakespeare Plays, which 
were often acted and written long before they were intro- 
duced by pirates to the public, it comes out clearly and 
convincingly that the earliest Sonnets were written in the 
years 1591 to 1593, when, as I have said, Herbert would 
be a boy of only eleven or twelve. 

Moreover, Mr. Tyler and all the " Herbertites " agree 
in saying that the first intimacy between Shakespeare and 
young Herbert must have taken place in 1598, when we 
know, on the best of evidence, young Herbert came up 
to live in London, having got his father's permission to do 
so " with much adoe." It is Rowland White, in the 
Sidney Papers, in his letters about the affairs at Court, 
who tells us this, and if the Sonnets, urging a lovely lad 
to marry, were written about 1593 at the very latest, 
what possible connection could they have with Shake- 
speare and William Herbert in 1598, five years later ? I 
should mention here, that I have made a discovery in 
the Sidney Papers, which neither Mr. Tyler nor any one 
else, as far as I know, has noticed, viz. that young William 
Herbert was up in town for some months in the latter 
part of the year 1595, when he would be between fifteen 
and sixteen, and that his parents were contemplating his 
marriage and engaged in negotiations about it at that 
very time. This would have been a great help to Mr. 
Tyler's ingenious theory if he had known of it, and indeed 
when I discovered it first, and took it in connection with 
Sonnet civ. and the three years' i?tterval between the first 
acquaintance with the lad there mentioned, I thought for 



134 PROOFS OF BACONIAN AUTHORSHIP 

a few moments very complacently that the chronological 
key of the Sonnets had been found at last, that Mr. W. H. 
was William Herbert, and that Southampton was thereby 
excluded from the Procreation Sonnets and all the others 
as well. But this state of mind did not last long. I 
looked again into Gerald Massey's scarce book, The 
Secret Drama of Shakespeare's Sonnets, privately printed 
in 1888, and there found again the evidence for Southamp- 
ton in such overwhelming force that it could not be 
resisted. I am of the same opinion still, and although 
this evidence of Massey is based on the Shakespearian 
hypothesis, and his early date of 1590 does not seem so 
probable to me as 1591-93, there can surely be no shadow 
of doubt that Southampton was the youth to whom the 
early Sonnets were addressed, and that the Pembroke and 
Fitton (?) Sonnets come on later in the book, and later 
than 1594 in any case. But my great point is that Bacon 
suits both the Southampton theory and the Pembroke 
theory of the later Sonnets so very much better than 
Shakespeare does, that the Sonnets, both early and late, 
can be almost said to establish, through these two historic 
personages, the great fact we are seeking to prove, viz., 
that Bacon was their author, and not Shakespeare. 

First let us take Southampton and the proofs about 
him, mainly from Massey, and from a concise summary 
in the Athenceum for April 28, 1866, which I give entire, 
as follows : — 

" If Southampton is not the male friend addressed by 
Shakespeare in the earlier portion of these poems (the Sonnets), 
evidence counts for nothing. Why, he is indicated in general 
and in particular — as regards his class and his person — by the 
most certain marks. The friend addressed by the poet is young 
(S. i), of gracious presence (S. 10), noble of birth (S. 37), rich 
in money and land (S. 48), a town gallant (S. 95), a man vain 
and exacting (S. 103). 

"These general characteristics, though vague and impersonal, 
exclude a good many pretenders to the ofifice of Shakespeare's 
friend. They exclude the whole class of actors, playwrights, and 
managers ; the whole tribe of Shakespeare's kinsmen and towns- 



THE EARLY SONNETS 135 

men; and all the imaginary Hugheses, Hathaways, and Hartes. 
They confine our field of choice to men of the rank and character 
of Essex, Rutland, Pembroke, and Southampton, and such like. 
Passing in review men of this class we find one, and only one, 
to whom all the criteria above will apply. Essex was not single ; 
Rutland had no previous connection with the poet, and had 
never publicly honoured him ; Pembroke was a mere boy, to 
whom Shakespeare had not dedicated a book. In 1595 Pem- 
broke, then William Herbert (Lord Herbert?), was only fifteen 
years old, and his mother was not a widow (and I may add, he 
was not an only son on whom the succession of the direct Hne 
depended). Every point in these criteria meets in Southampton." 

This critic takes, it will be seen, 1595 for the date of 
the Sonnets ; rather too late, I think. 

Mr. Massey devotes many pages to this theory (pp. 52- 
66), and begins thus : 

"The youth whom the poet first saw in all his semi- 
feminine freshness of the proverbial 'sweet seventeen,' and after- 
wards celebrated as a 'sweet boy,' a 'lovely boy,' a 'beauteous 
and lovely youth,' a pattern for rather than a copy of his Adonis, 
corresponds perfectly with Southampton in his seventeenth year. 
If we take the year 1590 for the first group of Sonnets, we shall 
find the young Earl of Southampton's age precisely reckoned up 
in Sonnet 16 : 

' Now stand you on the top of happy hours,' 

which shows us that the youth has sprung lightly up the ladder 
of his life, and now stands on the last golden round of boyhood. 
(The years 1591-93 suit equally well.) The very first Sonnet 
addresses one who is the 'world's fresh ornament' — that is, 
the budding favourite at Court, the fresh grace of its circle, the 
latest representative there of youthful spring — 'The Expectancy 
and Rose of the fair State ! " Southampton was, in truth, the 
'child of the state,' under the special protection of the Queen. 
He was recommended to her Majesty's notice and care by the 
loss of his father at so early an age, ... as well as favoured 
with the best word of his guardian, Burleigh, who at one time 
hoped to bring about a marriage betwixt Southampton and his 
own grand-daughter. We shall see further that such was his 
place in her Majesty's regards, that an endeavour was made 



136 PROOFS OF BACONIAN AUTHORSHIP 

by Sir Fulke Greville and others to get the Earl of Southampton 
installed as royal favourite instead of Essex." 

Gerald Massey proceeds with his arguments and proofs 
at too great length to extract them here, but I will give 
the summary, asking the reader first to notice how well 
Bacon would fit in if we consider the proposed marriage 
with Burghley's grand-daughter above, and the endeavour 
to get Southampton into the place of favour that Essex 
held. 

How badly Shakespeare fits in, too. What can 
Shakespeare, who has only been in London three or four 
years, and has hardly yet shaken off his dialect or the 
manners of the stable-yard — what can he possibly have 
to do with such matters of high statecraft and political 
influence ? Why should he, of all possible people, write 
a series of elaborate " Procreation Sonnets " in order to 
induce a young nobleman of high prospects to marry the 
grand-daughter of the highest dignitary in the kingdom ? 
What was Burghleyto Will Shakespeare, or he to Burghley ? 
And how on earth could the Warwickshire husband of 
Anne Hathaway, as yet only a rising supernumerary 
among a company of actors, " vagrants by law " and 
mostly out-at-elbows whether on the stage or off * — 
how on earth, I say, could he dare to make love to such 
a blooming scion of the aristocracy, and dare to make such 
a seventeen-fold suggestion, that he should marry at once 
and get a child " for love of me" (Sonnet x.), the me 
being in so extremely different a social position ? 

But if we take Bacon and put him in Shakespeare's 
place all fits in most admirably. There is no social bar 
between Francis Bacon, the clever son of the late Lord 
Keeper, and the young Earl of Southampton. They are, 
too, members of the same Honourable Society of Gray's 
Inn, and are likely enough to be brought into intimate 
contact, for Bacon, the older member of the Society, 
would be sure to call upon or at least cultivate the ac- 
quaintance of such a distinguished fresh-comer as was 

* Cf. Ben Jonson's attacks in Poetaster, &c. 



THE ADONIS OF THE SONNETS 137 

Southampton. Moreover, the beauty of the lad would 
draw Bacon to intimacy, if nothing else did. Who so 
likely as Bacon to try and foster a marriage that would 
unite the powerful families of Wriothesley and Cecil — 
unite his new friend Southampton to his old family patron 
Burghley and the Cecils generally, to whom, since the 
death of his father, Bacon had steadily and almost solely 
looked for help and patronage. And to get Southampton 
into Court favour instead of Essex would be indeed a 
double success, for Bacon and the Cecils would be rid of 
Essex, who was then a hostile influence to both, and 
Southampton, allied by marriage to Burghley (if it came 
off), would become a most powerful ally. 

There was some use and purpose in Bacon circulating 
among his private friends such sugared sonnets to the 
" coming man," but where does Shakespeare come in ? 
A few of the primary facts as substantiated by Mr. 
Massey, an orthodox Shakespearian be it remembered, 
are these : 

(i) That Henry Wriothesley was the fatherless 
young friend to whom Shakespeare addressed his first 
Sonnets. 

(2) That it was to him the promise of a public dedica- 
tion of his Poems was privately made in Sonnet xxvi. 

(3) That he was the living original from whom the 
poet drew his portrait of Adonis as the Master-Mistress 
of his passion. 

(4) That he was the man who encouraged Shake- 
speare to publish his Poems, and the friend to whom the 
Sonnets were offered privately as the " barren tender of 
a Poet's debt." 

(5) That a mass of the Sonnets belong to the time of 
the early Plays, and were therefore written too soon for 
William Herbert to have been the friend addressed in 
them. 

And finally, he adds, " If evidence is to count for any- 
thing, we|may now consider Henry Wriothesley, Earl of 
Southampton, to be sufficiently identified as the young 
friend and patron, who was both the object and subject 



138 PROOFS OF BACONIAN AUTHORSHIP 

of the early Sonnets." I heartily endorse these last 
words, and so do most students of the subject now. 

Mr. Massey has several other arguments besides the 
above, especially a curious solution of that well-known 
crux in Sonnet xx., which as originally printed was : 

" A man in hew all Hews in his controwling," 

where the word in italics with a capital H is supposed to 
contain some hidden allusion which might possibly dis- 
cover the secret. This I have left to be considered, with 
other solutions, when we are dealing with separate Sonnets. 

Our critic is rather severe and sarcastic when he has to 
deal with those who reject Southampton. " Professor 
Dowden," he remarks, " has the temerity to assert that 
Henry Wriothesley ' was not beautiful,' for which 
gratuitous assertion he had no warrant whatever. He 
merely repeats without testing what Boaden had already 
said without proof. The Professor further declares that 
Southampton bore ' no resemblance to his mother.'' But 
if this were a fact, he had no knowledge of it — where is 
the fact recorded ? ' Youngster,' said the impecu- 
nious manager Elliston to the author of Black-eyed Susan, 
' have you the confidence to lend me a guinea ? ' 'I 
have all the confidence in the world,' said Jerrold, ' but 
I haven't got the guinea.' So is it with the Herbertites. 
They have any amount of assertion, but not the needful 
facts." 

Those I have called the Herbertites Massey calls 
Brownites, and devotes a whole chapter to the Lues 
Browniana, with which disease he thinks all the champions 
of William Herbert are infected. Charles Armytage 
Brown wrote to prove the Herbert theory as early as 
1838, and Brown and Massey were looked upon as the 
protagonists of their respective sides. But none of these 
combatants had all the facts, and for the matter of 
Southampton's " beauty " I am able to contribute some 
new ones. 

Those Shakespearian critics {e.g. Prof. Dowden and 
others) who are opposed to the Southampton theory of 



THE ADONIS OF THE SONNETS 139 

the Sonnets, and have declared that Henry Wriothesley 
was anything but a good-looking man, and therefore 
most unlikely to receive the almost extravagant praise 
of the Sonnets, seem to have judged by the engraved 
portraits of Southampton in later life. These certainly 
do not give him the appearance of an Adonis, and do not 
lead us to fancy that he ever was one. But such learned 
critics have gone wrong, as so often happens, through 
their lack of the necessary knowledge that would per- 
manently settle the question. They can now, with- 
out any hesitation or any particle of doubt, be put 
right. 

The young Earl of Southampton when he was between 
eighteen and nineteen was an Adonis, and there is the 
best possible proof of it. He accompanied, with many 
others of the English aristocracy, our great Queen Elizabeth 
when she visited Oxford in state in 1592. The Vice- 
Chancellor of the University gave the royal company a 
dinner, and John Sanford, who was chaplain of Magdalen, 
and evidently an excellent Latin scholar, gave an account 
of this dinner and the guests in a very rare tract of Latin 
verse of which only two copies are known.* The most 
distinguished visitors each have two or three lines of 
notice in the poem, and this is what the learned John 
Sanford says of the young Southampton : 

" Quo non formosior alter 
Affuit, aut docta juvenis prasstantior arte ; 
Ora licet tenera vix dum lanugine vernent," 

i that is, he was the handsomest personage of the whole 
i company, though but a smooth-faced boy whose cheeks 
! had scarce yet the downy promise of Spring. Here is 
i Adonis drawn to the life. 

Strange to relate, the other candidate for the " only 
begetter " of the Sonnets was also among the guests on 
this historic occasion, and young William Herbert, then 
but twelve years old, was privileged to sit down with his 
father and enjoy the good things provided by hospitable 

* Apollinis et Musarurn 'Ei/Kxt/ca EiSi'XXto in serenissima: Regiyice Eliza- 
beths a^ispuatissinmrn Oxoniam adventum. — Oxonia (1592), 410, 



I40 PROOFS OF BACONIAN AUTHORSHIP 

Dr. Bond. The young boy is not without his Hne or two 
of praise : 

" Puer hue patrem comitatus euntem 
Sedit convivas inter, prsenobilis haeres 
Indolis egregiae, sed cui stat niessis in herbdP 

This was a neat httle piece of praise, for the words in 
itahcs were the family motto or emblem-device. 

Here then in this account we have a well-authenticated 
date, 1592, and we know pretty well how all the parties 
we are particularly concerned in are spending their time 
except that will-o'-the-wisp Shakespeare, whom we can 
hardly ever follow up or locate. 

As to dating the Sonnets as accurately as possible, it 
is important on the Bacon theory of authorship, for we 
do know, pretty well, from Spedding's exhaustive life of 
Bacon, what was happening to him each year from 1590 
or thereabouts. But, on the Shakespeare theory, 
dating the Sonnets is not of much use, and indeed 
prominent Shakespearians, such as Mr. Howard Furness 
of the Variorum Shakespeare, and otheHTaireelEoTiris , 
for they tell us : 

" If we arrange dates to Shakespeare's Plays, what else is it 
but re-arranging that chronological table which by courtesy we 
now call a Life of Shakespeare, and which he who knows more 
about it than all the rest of us styles, as modestly as truthfully, 
merely outlines. Of the real Life we know absolutely nothing, 
and I for one am genuinely thankful that it is so, and gladly 
note, as the years roll on, that the obscurity which envelops it 
is as utter and impenetrable as ever." * 

This seems an odd utterance, that a devoted Shakesperian 
should be thankful for knowing so little about Shake- 
speare's true life ; but I think he means this, that he is 
glad Shakespeare is not in the Poems and Plays personally 
or autobiographically, for he does not want the incidents 
of Shakespeare's possibly trivial life half-masked in the 
verse or action of the Plays ; he would much rather have 
the marvellous conceptions of Shakespeare's mind pre- 
sented in their singular beauty as they are now, inde- 

* Merchant of Venice, Var. Ed., p. 277. 



THE ADONIS OF THE SONNETS 141 

pendent of any such autobiographical allusions, free 
expressions of the highest fancy, and absolutely unmasked 
and undisguised. 

But no such difficulties or disappointments crop up 
on the Baconian theory — the clearer idea we get of the 
dates, the better proofs have we whereby we can judge 
whether Bacon wrote them or not ; and personally I 
must say that making clear to myself the early date of 
the first seventeen Sonnets had much to do with making 
clear to me who their author was. If the earlier Sonnets 
were written about 1591-92, it is very hard to see how 
Shakespeare can possibly come in. But we shall hear 
more about dates when we take some of the Sonnets 
separately. 

Enough has been said, I hope, to show that South- 
ampton is the " lovely youth " addressed in the earlier 
Sonnets, and that certainly Francis Bacon was a far more 
likely person to write familiar and affectionate sonnets 
to a rising young aristocrat than was the nondescript 
supernumerary William Shakespeare. I shall try to 
prove this more conclusively still when I come to consider 
the correspondence (epistolary) that passed between 
Bacon and the Earls of Southampton, Pembroke, and 
Essex. 

But I have a very good proof that Bacon did write 
sonnets, and, what is more, showed them to his friend 
Southampton for his opinion and judgment ; and perhaps 
this is the best place to introduce it. I am also inclined 
to think that this very poem is extant, having been 
ascribed to Shakespeare on the authority of a common- 
place book which is preserved in the Hamburg City 
Library. I shall give the poem and a fuller account 
when I deal with the correspondence of Bacon and Essex. 
Meanwhile, here is the evidence referred to above : 

Bacon in his Apology concerning the late Earl of Essex, 
published in 1604, says : 

" A little before that time, (the Trial) being about the middle 
of Michaelmas term, her Majesty had a purpose to dine at my 



142 PROOFS OF BACONIAN AUTHORSHIP 

lodge at Twicknam Park, at which time I had (though I profess 
not to be a poet) prepared a sonnet directly tending and alluding 
to draw on her Majesty's reconcilement to my Lord, which I 
remember also I showed to a great person^ and one of my 
Lord's nearest friends, who commended it : this, though it 
be (as I said) but a try, yet it shewed plainly in what spirit I 
proceeded," &c. 

I suggest that this great person and great friend of 
Essex was none other than Southampton, and that Bacon 
showed him this sonnet as he had shown to him many 
another sonnet before, j)nvately as among friends. The 
author of Shakespeare's Poems and Plays was apparently 
on terms of friendship and admiration with both Essex 
and Southampton before the disastrous Irish expedition 
and the subsequent rebellious uprising of Essex and his 
followers (Feb. 1601) ; but as Mr. Tyler says {Sonnets, 
p. 30), " there is reason to believe that as early as 1601 
he became alienated from Southampton." 

The Baconian hypothesis fits in best with these facts, 
for the guilt or innocence of Essex and Southampton was 
of vital importance to Bacon, whose whole political 
advancement and future prospects in life depended on 
it, while the actor-manager Shakespeare and his relation 
to Southampton would be looked at as merely that of 
literary client and patron, without any treasonable or 
political significance. After Elizabeth's death, and when 
James I. had shown his good inclination towards South- 
ampton, and had set him free from his imprisonment, then 
it was that Bacon wrote to Southampton a remarkable 
letter (c/. Montagu's Life of Bacon, p. 98), in which he 
uses this expression, " I may safely be that to you now, 
which I was truly before." Bacon makes a strong appeal 
for renewed friendship, but it does not appear that the 
appeal was met in any particular way. It is supposed that 
the breach caused by Bacon's conduct at the trial of Essex 
was never quite healed. But under James I. they be- 
longed to the same political party and had the same 
interests, and were both in favour of colonisation, and 
sat together on the Council of Virginia. 



SIDNEY'S INFLUENCE 143 

The lifelong intimacy and the early and very close 
relationship between Bacon and Southampton present no 
difficulties to the historical inquirer. 

It is a different and wellnigh impossible task that 
faces us when we try to join together in early friendship, 
or even in mere casual acquaintance, two men so widely 
apart in the qualifications that make for intimacy, as 
were Southampton and Shakespeare. The suggestions 
that critics are often obliged to make to account, for 
instance, for the first introduction of one to the other are 
in general ludicrously imaginative. Indeed, the only 
point that the Shakespearians can score in this matter is, 
that the poems Venus and Adonis and Lucrece are dedica- 
cated to Southampton, and signed by Shakespeare in his 
own name. But how easily might that have been a blind. 
Bacon might not wish to " show his head " until his be- 
loved Southampton gavehis consent, andSouthampton may 
not have cared that Bacon should appear in the matter at 
all, lest the malevolent world should begin to wag its 
tongue about the "sugred sonnets " or something worse. 

Of this one thing we may be pretty sure : the author 
of Venus and Adonis and the Sonnets was a man of elegant 
and courtly manners, who was at the time of writing much 
under the influence of Sidney's Arcadia and Sidney's other 
literary works. It should be noticed that Venus and 
Adonis, although not quite commendable from the moral- 
pedagogical point of view, and not quite a book for the 
young lady's boudoir, or even the drawing-room table, 
is most certainly not written in a low or vulgar strain of 
obscenity, and is far removed from the ribald licence that 
was too often permitted both in public and private in 
those more outspoken days. I believe Queen Elizabeth, 
old as she was, would have read of this Adonis, his boyish 
attractions and shame-faced manners, with the highest 
interest — nay, would almost have gloated over some of 
the more striking passages, for she had the blood of 
Henry " Bluebeard " Tudor in her veins, and was as 
fond of blushing beardless boys when she herself was 
approaching sixty, as an old maid of her last litter of 



144 PROOFS OF BACONIAN AUTHORSHIP 

kittens — and let us hope with no more evil intent. I 
am not one to bring up fresh " scandal " against the 
Virgin Queen, and when I suppose the Queen to be an 
interested reader of Venus and Adonis, I take into account 
the manners of the time, and do not charge her Majesty 
with being any worse in her literary tastes than her 
lively maids of honour. I believe she was more foolishly 
vain than the majority of her sex, and looked for real 
love and adoration at sixty — but that was perhaps all, 
and her unique position may have produced and sustained 
that feeling. It has more than once crossed my mind 
that if Bacon really wrote Venus and Adonis with South- 
ampton's beauty and Court prospects before him, the 
aspiring Francis must have plainly seen that such enticing 
descriptions of a handsome youth, with Southampton's 
name on the dedication-page, must evidently help to 
bring the latter to the Queen's notice and to further 
Court favour and comment ; and this was exactly what 
Bacon wanted. 

The Virgin Queen was certainly not too much of a 
prude to read Venus and Adonis. Even when quite a 
young girl she was perfectly ready, so it seems, for a game 
of romps with her good-looking and semi-paternal guardian 
if he came into her bedroom before she was up or dressed. 
She was no prude then, nor yet, we may take it, years 
and years afterwards, when her old lover Essex came in 
hot haste from Ireland, and came all travel-stained to 
seek his "sovereign," pressing into the royal presence 
before her Majesty was ready outwardly to receive him. 
Queen Elizabeth was, in spite of her imperious disposition 
and masterful activity in state matters, rather frivolous 
in her pleasures and recreations, and spent more time in 
seeing plays and frequenting what we should nowadays 
call " low-class entertainments," than cursory readers of 
history manuals would ever suspect. And that great 
Queen, who had heard in plain English on the stage what 
was the " privie fault " of "Cisly Bumtrinket," and per- 
haps laughed over it,* was not likely to throw aside 

* Dekker's Shoemaker's Holiday, 1600, 4. 



VENUS AND ADONIS 145 

Venus and Adonis from any feelings of prudery. Perhaps 
Bacon knew that, and saw the advantage to be gained. 

The more I consider this " first heir " of the author's 
*' invention," the more do I think it hkely that Bacon 
wrote it when closely drawn to Southampton's company, 
friendship, and future prospects, rather than that Shake- 
speare should bring it up to town with him from his 
provincial home (as many believe, for it was an un- 
doubtedly early work) and dedicate it to Southampton 
on the chance of his valuable patronage. It is said, I 
know, that the poem is quite alien to Bacon's serious and 
philosophic turn, but, as I have tried to show, Bacon in 
his early Gray's Inn days was not such a serious and staid 
personage as we mentally picture him to be later in life. 
Besides, I do not see that it is so very reprehensible even 
in the region of morals to write and dedicate such a poem 
as Venus and Adonis to Southampton. True, it was not 
a work to be written or dedicated Virginihus puerisque, 
but Southampton was neither one nor the other. He 
was quite of an age to be married ; marriage was talked 
about, and the early Sonnets recommended it. If 
Alphonse Daudet dedicated Sappho to his sons " quand 
ils auront vingt ans," a fortiori, I say, might Bacon, who 
was neither the lad's father nor tutor, dedicate Venus 
and Adonis to Southampton, who was this very age. 

Moreover, so many things seem to point to Bacon ; 
the last stanzas of Venus and Adonis show the author to 
be somewhat of a misogynist in spite of his impassioned 
descriptions — which, by the way, are both here and in 
the Lover^s Lament mainly occupied with the male — 
otherwise he would not depreciate and calumniate love 
as he does towards the end of the poem. The method 
here used strongly calls to mind the similar impeachments 
of love in the last Sonnets to the " Dark Lady." In 
both cases they seem somewhat uncalled for, especially 
in Venus and A donis ; and this very fact seems to show 
the true psychological character of the writer. It suits 
Bacon, as Aubrey describes him, very accurately, but not 
Shakespeare, who was a virile Benedict very early in life, 

K 



146 PROOFS OF BACONIAN AUTHORSHIP 

and had twins before he was in a position to maintain 
them. 

But the Sonnets have a great deal to say about a 
*' Will " or " Wills," and from the way these words are 
printed in italics and referred to in the Sonnets, it seems 
evident that a person (or persons) named William plays 
a leading part in the mystery of the Sonnets, especially 
of the later ones. It is enough to say here that nearly 
all the best Shakespearians of the orthodox party agree 
that William Herbert is the hero of the later Sonnets, and 
seeing that his unfortunate liaison with Mistress Fitton 
is a historical fact fitting in very well with the hazy 
circumstances of the later Sonnets, the number of critics 
is steadily increasing who believe that Mary Fitton is the 
" Dark Lady," the unlovely yet, in some way, fascinating 
charmer to whom both Shakespeare and Pembroke fell a 
victim. More recently, too, some family documents have 
been discovered in the muniment room of the Newdegate 
family, which was allied by marriage to the Fittons, and 
from these fresh corroborating evidence has been drawn. 
It had been supposed by that shrewd dramatic critic 
Mr. Archer that the " Dark Lady " in Sonnet cxxxv. 
was intriguing with three Wills at the same time, seeing 
that she was thus addressed : 

*' Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy lVz7/, 
And /rV// to boot, and M'^z// in overplus." 

Now William Herbert and William Shakespeare would 
account for two Wills, but who was the third Will ? This 
was a mystery until the letters from the Newdigate chest 
revealed the fact that Sir William Knollys, who was 
Comptroller of the Queen's Household, and therefore 
brought into close relation to the maids of honour, was 
a great admirer of Mary Fitton, and had talked of marrying 
her when his elderly wife was out of the way. Here then 
was the third Will, and a most curious old gentleman he 
was to be let loose in a chamber full of frisky young 
maids of honour. But that is another tale, to be told in 
its proper place, under Sonnet cxxxv. 



THE TWO CAMPS 147 

The Herbertites were naturally much encouraged in 
their opinions by such an unexpected corroboration as 
this. But they soon had their new confidence dashed to 
the ground by one of their own orthodox side. Mr. 
Sidney Lee had changed his camp, which used to lie 
under the Pembroke standard, and had joined the camp 
of Southampton ; so at once he began to lay about him 
vigorously, and his orthodox fellow-Shakespearians who 
lived in his former camp went down like ninepins before 
a cunning thrower. Pembroke, said he, will not do at 
any price, or with any corroboration ; why, Shakespeare 
hardly knew him, and the only positive proof we have 
of any connection between the two was the casual remark 
in the dedication of the first folio Shakespeare (1623), 
that Pembroke and his brother had " prosequuted " the 
plays and " their author living " with much favour, which 
most likely only meant the brother earls shared in the 
enthusiastic esteem which James I. and all the noblemen 
of the court extended to Shakespeare and his plays during 
the dramatist's lifetime. 

I think that Mr. Lee had the best of this argument, 
and that it was, to say the least, most unlikely that Shake- 
speare, being the manner of man he was, with a wife and 
family at Stratford into the bargain, should have had such 
a peculiar and close intimacy with a prominent young 
nobleman and a maid of honour standing high in the 
Queen's favour. 

To such difficulties are Shakespearians reduced, and 
in such suicidal contests do they indulge. For if the 
close intimacy of Shakespeare and Pembroke, as supposed 
to be revealed in the later Sonnets, is without any positive 
proof and against all probability, why then Shakespeare 
did not write these Sonnets, and thence assuredly follows 
the inference, neither did he write the Plays. For of this 
fact I am as confident as I can be, in a world where il ne 
faut jurer de rien, that whoever wrote the Shakespeare 
Sonnets was mainly responsible for the Shakespeare Plays. 

But how everything becomes more reasonable and 
probable when the Baconian hypothesis is applied ! 



148 PROOFS OF BACONIAN AUTHORSHIP 

All the arguments derived from birth and social posi- 
tion which I used in the case of Southampton and Bacon 
apply equally well here with regard to all the three persons 
implicated — to Pembroke, to Bacon, and to Mistress 
Fitton. Bacon was evidently in a position about court, 
wherein he would have frequent opportunities of meeting 
and being intimately acquainted with both young Herbert 
and Mary Fitton. Shakespeare, on the other hand, would 
not, from his position, be likely to be closely intimate 
with any ladies of the court, or with any court noblemen 
either. 

Now young " Lord Herbert," as he was called, was, 
as I have discovered, on a two or three months' visit to 
London between October and December 1595. He was 
fifteen, and was in town partly for the sake of a marriage 
being arranged for him, according to the following evidence 

^' which I have extracted from Rowland White's letters to 

Sir Robert Sydney at Flushing, giving him the court and 
^ "^ general news. 

f^ A Letter from Roland White to Sir Robert 

X'^^ Sydney (at Flushing) 

V ' **8M Oct 1595. — My Lord of Pembroke . . . with my Lord 

Harbart (have) come up to see the Queen, and (as I heare) 
to deal in the Matter of a Marriage with Sir George Carey's 
W * O^' daughter." 

"/ ' \ " i6fk Nov. 1595. — Lord Harbart in town still." 

V / '^ 15th Dec. 1595. — Sir George Carey takes it very unkindly, 
^-A that my Lord of Pembroke broke off the match intended between 

my Lord Harbart and his Daughter, and told the Queene it 
was because he wold not assure him ;!^iooo a Yeare, which 
comes to his Daughter, as next of Kinne to Queen Ann Bullen. 
He hath now concluded a marriage between his Daughter and 
my Lord Barkley's Sonne and Heire." 

It is not at all unlikely that Bacon, being often at 
court, would make the acquaintance of the young lad 
now ; especially if his mother, " Sidney's sister," was up 
with her son. 



THE CANOPY SONNET 149 

Thus after three years, young Herbert, in the spring 
of 1598 or perhaps a httle before, comes up to live per- 
manently in town. We know nothing of the way in 
which he spent the year 1598, although there is an allusion 
in a letter of Tobie Matthew dated Sept. 15, 1598, to 
the effect that a marriage was contemplated between 
William Herbert and Lady Hatton, who must have been 
considerably older than he was. During 1599 Herbert 
was frequently at court, and on Nov. 24 White records, 
" My Lord Harbert is exceedingly beloved at court of 
all men." I should think Francis Bacon was much more 
likely to be one of the company of " adorers " than was 
William Shakespeare. And in August 1600 White men- 
tions him again thus : "My Lord Harbert is very well 
thought of, and keepes company with the best and gravest 
in court." This looks rather as if he were one of Francis 
Bacon's intimates. Anyhow, two months before, on 
June 16, 1600, there was a grand marriage festival, where 
Herbert and Bacon were both most likely prominent 
actors. Bacon was the cousin of the bride, Mistress Ann 
Russell, and Herbert was one of the two noblemen who 
conducted the bride to church. The Queen herself was 
there, and having come to Blackfriars by water, she was 
carried from the waterside in a lectica borne by six knights. 
Bacon is not named as one, nor was he a knight at this 
date, but it seems very possible from Sonnet cxxv. (the 
Canopy Sonnet), beginning, " Were 't aught to me I bore 
the canopy," that Bacon was privileged, as a cousin of the 
bride and one so well known to the Queen, to assist in 
bearing the canopy over the lectica, although he was not 
of such knightly rank as the other bearers. 

There was every likelihood, too, of Bacon knowing 
Mistress Mary Fitton very intimately, although there is, 
I believe, no record of such acquaintance in print or in 
MS. Bacon had two rather lively cousins, the Russells, 
among the maids of honour, and through them and 
through his interest in court masques and plays Bacon 
would almost certainly be frequently thrown into the 
company of the good dancer, Mistress Mary Fitton, the 



I50 PROOFS OF BACONIAN AUTHORSHIP 

foremost among the Queen's maids in the mazes of the 
masques and dances. If she was a noted flirt, and a 
woman " coloured ill," yet it was not Will Shakespeare 
who was, in my opinion, the third " Will." I think Will 
Kemp the famous clown and jig-dancer was a much more" 
likely man to complete the trio, though he was in a lower 
station than the other two aristocrats. He was not un- 
known at court, and had absolutely been bold enough to 
dedicate his book, the Nine dates wonder, to " Mistress 
Anne Fitton, Mayde of Honour to the most sacred Mayde, 
Royal Queene Elizabeth." Here Mistress Fitton's 
Christian name is given erroneously as Anne, for Mary 
was the only sister of the Fittons who was a maid of 
honour in 1600, and she is undoubtedly the one meant 
by Kemp. Kemp probably knew her well enough to 
dedicate his book to her, through having been her occa- 
sional tutor or prompter in dancing and posturing. So 
it looks as if the Sonnet was right about the third Will — 
if Will Kemp be meant — and that he really was somewhat 
intimate with this unconventional young lady, who 
tucked up her clothes and put on a man's long cloak and 
marched out to meet her lover — or her lovers, for she 
was certainly not confined to one. Anyhow, there 
seems excellent direct evidence as to Kemp in the follow- 
ing verse of contemporary court satire, probably written 
by T. Churchyard, which is found in an unprinted ballad 
of the year 1601 preserved among the State Papers 
(Eliz., vol. 278, No. 23), in which the maids' chamber, or 
the Queen's household in general, represented as a herd 
of deer, is the subject of the second stanza, the Lord 
Chamberlain being the subject of the first. Sir Robert 
Cecil of the third, and Raleigh of the seventh and last : 

" Partie beard was afeard 
When they rann at the herd ; 
The Raine dear was imbost, 
The white doe she was lost ; 
Pembroke strooke her downe 
And took her from the clowne 
Lord, for thy piTtie ! " 



/k^ 




WILL KEMP 151 

A writer i n Bla ckwood's Magazine, ^ June 1901, explains 
thus : " ' Partie bearST^seems to be a nickname of the 
Comptroller of the Household, Sir William KnoUys ; the 
* Raine dear ' is the Queen {la reine), ' imbost ' or em- 
bossed is a hunting term with the secondary meaning of 
enraged (cf. Antony and Cleopatra, iv., xiii. 3) ; the 
' white doe ' is Mistress Fitton, and ' the clowne ' is 
Shakespeare." 

The writer of the above deserves credit for a useful 
literary find, and his explanation of the stanza given 
seems likely enough with one important exception. The 
" clowne " I suggest was Will Kemp, who always took 
the part of " clown " in Shakespeare's company, and 
elsewhere too. Shakespeare never was " clown " pro- 
fessionally, nor ever stigmatised as " clownish " as far as 
I know. He was the " gentle Shakespeare," " sweet Mr. 
Shakespeare," &c. 

I do not think that the question of the supposed close 
intimacy between Herbert and Shakespeare and Mary 
Fitton need detain us much longer. There is really no 
good evidence to support it ; and the necessary inference 
that the Queen's maid of honour was Shakespeare's 
mistress before she knew Herbert, or indeed at any time, 
is so extremely unlikely, that it would require the strongest 
evidence to make it at all credible. 

Such a remarkable theory seems to have had its 
origin in the mysterious Mr. W. H., to whom the Sonnets 
were supposed to be addressed, or who was the sole 
cause of begetting or producing them in the brain of the 
author Shake-speare. But Mr. W. H. is only just possibly 
William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and may just as well 
be the Mr. W. Hall whom Mr. Sidney Lee brings forward 
— indeed, I think that the curiously coincident collocation 
of letters : 

" To the onlie begetter of 
these ensuing sonnets 
Mr. IV. H. all happinesse 
and that eternitie,'" &c., 

rather points in the direction Mr. Lee has aimed at. 



152 PROOFS OF BACONIAN AUTHORSHIP 

The following old jingle also seems to add probability 
to this : 

"My love's Will 
I am content to fulfil. 
Within this rime his name is framed, 
Tell me then how he is named ? " 

The answer, of course, is Will I am = William. 

But though we cannot connect Lord Herbert and 
Shakespeare together by any contemporary history or 
satire, we can, as I believe and propose to show, connect 
Herbert and Bacon in a way so far quite unnoticed by 
any critic of the Sonnets. 

I think we meet Bacon and Herbert in Sir John Daw 
(Bacon) and Sir Amorous La-Foole (Herbert), both 
characters of Ben Jonson's play The Silent Woman (1609). 
To see the full force of the allusions the play ought to be 
read through carefully, and I will also say here that the 
Silent Woman, who is called " Epicoene " in the dramatis 
personce, and with whom both the gallant knights confess 
to have had a consummated liaison, turns out in the end 
to be a boy in woman's clothes. Sir John Daw shows 
Bacon's head on his shoulders as plain as a pikestaff. He 
had been giving his views (Act ii. sc. 2) of the poets, and 
had poured forth a succession of names after the manner 
of the list in Palladis Tamia, when Clerimont and 
Dauphine, characters in the play, discuss him thus : 

Cler. What a sackfull of their names he has got. 

Dauph. And how he pours them out ! Politian with Valerius 
Flaccus ! * 

Cler. I wonder that he is not called to the helm and made a 
counsellor. 

Dauph. He is one extraordinary. 

Cler. Nay, but in ordinary : to say truth, the state wants such. 

Dauph. Why, that will follow. 

Cler. I muse a mistress can be so silent to the dotes of such a 
servant. 



* Meres in his famous Comparative Discourse on the Poets (1598), which 
tells us so much about Shakespeare's plays, brings in Politian and other moderns 
along with the ancients as Sir John Daw does. I have often thought tliis part 
of the second Bodenham book might be iJacon's. Jonson seems to hint it here. 



SIR JOHN DAW-BACON 153 

Daw. 'Tis her virtue, sir. I have written somewhat of her 
silence too. 

Dauph. In verse, Sir John ? 
Cler. What else. 

Dauph. Why, how can you justify your own being of a poet, that 
so slight all the old poets ? 

Daw. Why, every man that writes in verse is not a poet : you 
have of the wits that write verses, and yet are no poets : they are 
poets that live by it, the poor fellows that live by it. 

Dauph. Why should not you live by your verses. Sir John ? 
Cler. No, 'twere pity he should. A knight live by his verses ! he 
did not make them to that end, I hope. 

Dauph. And yet the noble Sidney lives by his, and the noble 
family not ashamed. 

Cler. Ay, he profest himself: but Sir John Daw has more caution : 
he'll not hinder his own rising in the state so much. Do you think he 
will? Your verses, good Sir John, and no poems. 

Daw. " Silence in woman, is like speech in man ; 

Deny 't who can." 
Dauph. Not I, believe it, your reason, sir. 
Daw. " Nor is't a tale 

That female vice should be a virtue male, 
Or masculine vice a female virtue be : 

You shall it see. 
Proved with increase : 
I know to speak, and she to hold her peace." 
Do you conceive me, gentlemen ? 
Dauph. No, faith ; how mean you with increase. Sir John ? 
Daw. Why, with increase is, when I court her for the common 
cause of mankind, and she says nothing, but consentire videtur j and in 
time is gravida. 

Dauph. Then this is a ballad of procreation ? 
Cler. A madrigal of procreation ; you mistake. 
Epiccene., the Silent Woman. Pray give me my verses again, 
servant. 

Daw. If you ask them aloud, you shall. 

[ Walks aside with the papers. 

I shall not comment on this or many other passages 
of this play and other plays ; it would take me beyond 
the subject in hand, and surely any one who knows a 
little of Bacon's early life and the scandals connected with 
it will not want a commentary, and the madrigal is in 
the metre of Bacon's single specimen, The world's a bubble, 
&c. I will give one more extract. They are discussing 



154 PROOFS OF BACONIAN AUTHORSHIP 

the character of Epicoene (the Silent Woman with the 
boy's doublet and hose beneath her dress, Mrs. Fitton ? ) : 

Cler. And what humour is she of? Is she coming and open, free ? 

Daw. O, exceeding open, sir. I was her servant, and Sir Amorous 
was to be. 

Cler. Come, you have both had favours from her : I know, and 
have heard so much. 

Daw. O no, sir. 

La-Foole. You shall excuse us, sir, we must not wound reputation. 

Cler. Tut, she is married now ; and you cannot hurt her with any 
report ; and therefore speak plainly : how many times, i' faith ? which 
of you led first ? ha ! 

La-Foole. Sir John had her maidenhead,* indeed. 

Daw. O, it pleases him to say so, sir ; but Sir Amorous knows 
what's what as well. 

Cler. Dost thou, i' faith. Amorous ? 

La-Foole. In a manner, sir. 

Cler. Why, I commend you, lads, little knows Don Bridegroom of 
this ; nor shall he for me. 

Whether this Don Bridegroom was Captain Lougher 
or Captain Polwhele I shall not venture to examine, for 
genealogists cannot agree which had the precedence in 
marrying Mary Fitton. 

However, whether these remarkable allusions stand 
or fall does not so much matter, for in either case we have 
a total exclusion of Shakespeare of Stratford from any 
connection with this evidently popular tale of the 
" scandal of the Epicoene woman." The date of this 
Jonsonian play should be noticed ; it coincides with the 
publishing of the incriminating Sonnets. 

But I must find a place for one more very short 
extract from Act iv. sc. 2. One of the characters thus 
addresses Sir John Daw : 

If you love me, Jack, you shall make use of your philosophy now, 
for this once, and deliver me your sword. 

Daw {replies). As I hope to finish Tacitus, I intend no murder. 

What possible reason, one asks, was there for Ben to 
bring Tacitus in ? he had absolutely nothing whatever 
to do with the plot or the incidents of the plays. True, 

* This excludes the drab Lais. 



BACON AND TACITUS 155 

but it was a fine hit at Bacon, and is a neat, manifold 
allusion of Ben's to (i) the tale of Queen Elizabeth, 
Bacon, the play of Richard II., and Dr. Hay ward. Here 
Bacon got out of a grave difficulty, when questioned by 
Elizabeth, by saying he did not find treason in the in- 
criminated play, but felony — felony from Tacitus. Ben 
knew what he was writing about well enough, and so 
would the audience. It was also clearly an allusion to (2) 
some work on Tacitus by Bacon now unfortunately lost. 
There was a work entitled Notes from the First Book 
of Tacitus, touching the Making or Breaking of Factions. 
This was among Bacon's papers when Dr. Tenison made 
a list of what he had in a box in 1682. These Tacitus 
notes and many other papers on Tenison's list have now 
disappeared. Or it might be an allusion to (3) an 
English translation of Tacitus, presumably written by a 
Richard Grenewey, of whom nothing is known (in 1597). 
Some have thought this translation to be by Bacon on 
account of the many parallel passages in it and in Richard 
II. Perhaps Jonson knew. But anyhow, no one but 
Bacon suits this Tacitus allusion. In fact. Bacon is 
clearly aimed at in many ways, and such a series of apt 
satirical allusions as we meet with in the character of 
Sir John Daw could not, I venture to assert, be adapted 
to any contemporary personage except Francis Bacon, 
knight, lawyer, concealed poet, rising statesman, and 
" extraordinary counsellor." He and Sir John Daw 
alike filled all these positions. That Sir Amorous is 
young Lord Herbert is not quite so clear, and perhaps 
some may think that the circumstances of the play would 
agree with Southampton's love-escapades almost as well. 
But I think not so, for Southampton is not connected 
with a maiden in the Sonnets at all, but with a Lady 
of considerable experience in the bonds of love and 
possibly of wedlock too ; while with Herbert and Mistress 
Fitton it was presumably a case of virgin love, and this 
apparently was Epicoene's case in the play. Moreover, 
I shall show that Ben Jonson in another play, later on, 
alludes to Southampton and his bosom friend Bacon, and 



iS6 PROOFS OF BACONIAN AUTHORSHIP 

their common drab whom they shared between them — 
the lady here being of a very different stamp from a maid 
of honour. Moreover, Sir Amorous La-Foole does not 
present to us the character of a practised romf, or an 
associate with depraved women of the theatres ; but 
rather appears to be a simple, sensual young gallant of not 
overmuch experience. And this hits off young Lord 
Herbert very well. Till he fell a victim to Mary Fitton's 
blandishments he seems, by what Rowland White and 
others tell us, to have been a young aristocrat who made 
a good impression at court, and was fond of the society of 
grave and notable men, but eventually showed that he had 
a nature of a warm and sensuous kind. No doubt the 
terpsichorean abilities of Mistress Mary Fitton had some- 
thing to do with conquering his youthful modesty, for on 
June i6, 1600, he was present at the marriage of Mistress 
Anne Russell (one of the frisky, gambolling lambs that 
disturbed old Sir William Knollys), and helped to conduct 
the bride to church. This was indeed an eventful day for 
him, for Mistress Fitton was chief dancer in the Masque. 
An eventful day indeed ! Some of its blushing secrets 
were doubtless kept ever hidden in his breast, for on 
March 25, 1601, Mary Fitton, the Queen's most notable 
and lively maid of honour, brought forth a male child, 
born dead. This tell-tale boy carries us back to that 
" leafy month of June " of the year before, when the 
marriage guests were all so merry, and when, no doubt, 
young Lord Herbert fell vanquished by Cupid's dart. 
However, before this he had not been a forward lover, 
and clearly we cannot connect him with any common 
" drab " or " loose-legged Lais." Let him tell his own 
tale as to that. 

Sonnet 

By William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke 
{Opportunities neglected'\ 

Yet was her Beauty as the blushing Rose, 
And greedy passionate was my desire. 
And Time, and Place, my reconciled Foes, 
Did with my wish and her consent conspire : 



A BLUSHING ROSE 157 

Why then o'er-reachless of my Love's fruition, 
So eagerly pursued with rough intent, 
So dearly purchast with performed condition, 
Kept I my rude Virginity unspent ? 
Did shee not sweetly kiss ? and sweetly sing ? 
And sweetly play ? and all to move my pleasure ? 
And every dalliance use, and everything, 
And show my sullen Eyes her naked Treasure ? 
All this she did, I wilfully forbore ; 
J And why ? Because methought she was an whore. 

The sonnet seems to represent a real and striking 
incident, and the heroine seems educated, or at least 
highly accomplished — possibly it might be one of Mistress 
Mary's unsuccessful attempts. But no, her beauty was 
" as the blushing Rose." This will not suit, for Mr. 
Tyler, who has taken great interest in her, and has 
specially examined her monumental effigy in Gawsworth 
Church, found her to be a swarthy, black-haired damsel, 
with thick, sensuous lips. But on the other hand, 
during the circumstances described in Herbert's sonnet, 
I should say that a warm blush would naturally suffuse 
her cheeks, so she might have been like a deep-coloured 
rose after all. In any case I accept this sonnet — as I do 
the Shakespeare Sonnets — as Biography and not Idealism. 
I think it shows young Herbert to be a very different 
stamp of man from that rou^ the Earl of Southampton, 
who thought nothing of unseating his closest friend 
Bacon in the jousts of Venus ; 

" Ay me ! but yet thou might'st my seat forbear." 

— Sonnet XLI. 9. 

As I have hinted several times, Ben Jonson knew as 
well as any one all the theatrical and general scandal of 
the town, and he seems to have taken delight in alluding 
to it in his various plays. He knew the character of 
Mary Fitton, and was well acquainted with the gossip 
about her at his Tavern haunts. He had a shrewd con- 
jecture that young William Herbert was not 

" The first that ever burst 
Into that silent sea." 



158 PROOFS OF BACONIAN AUTHORSHIP 

And in any case he knew, for it was the public property 
of all the town gossips, that young Lord Herbert had 
found his lively maid of honour a " sea of trouble " to 
him — a sea that had given up its dead in sorrow and 
disgrace. It seems pretty clear that he used this know- 
ledge, and tried to amuse the public with hidden allusions 
to it, in his Silent Woman of 1609, just about the time 
the Shake-speare Sonnets were brought to light. He 
introduces Sir John Daw and Sir Amorous La-Foole in 
this play, and he did not make it a very hard riddle for 
the spectators to guess. We are not nowadays in a 
position to get as sure and certain a grasp of all that 
was meant as those who listened to the words and saw 
the actions of the players ; but I do think we can grasp 
Jack Daw, take his theatrical feathers from him, and find 

— BACON. 

For the sake of my American readers I will add yet 
one more piece of evidence connecting Sir John Daw with 
Bacon. At the beginning of Act V. of The Silent Woman 
one of the female characters of the play says, " Gentlemen, 
have any of you a pen and ink ? " To this Clericus, 
another character on the stage, answers, " Not I in troth, 
lady ; I am no scrivener. Then Sir John Daw intervenes 
with, " I can furnish you I think, lady." And the lady 
leaves with Sir John to get what she has asked for. Now 
it is a notorious fact that Bacon had a scriptorium and 
many busy penmen in it, and if scrivener's work should 
be required, it could be certainly furnished by Bacon. 
But it is when Sir John Daw and the lady have gone for the 
pen and ink, that the interesting American allusion is 
brought forward. 

The other characters go on talking about Sir John Daw 
directly he has left the stage, and Sir Amorous La-Foole 
speaks of his " box of instruments," and also of " his brass 
pens and black lead, to draw maps of every place and 
person where he comes." Then says Clericus : 

C/er. How maps of persons? 

La-Foole. Yes, Sir of Nomentack when he was here, and of the 
Prince of Moldavia and of his mistress. Mistress Epicoene. 



AN AMERICAN INDIAN 159 

Now how many Englishmen, I wonder, know the 
history of Nomentack ? Very few indeed. But Americans 
who are interested in early Virginian records will remem- 
ber him well enough. 

Nomentack, or more properly Namontack, was a trusty 
servant of the well-known Indian chief Powhattan, who 
was the father of the still better-known Princess Poca- 
hontas. Nomentack is said to have been a man of " a 
shrewd and subtle capacitie," and when Captain Smith 
thought of returning home, this " tmstie " native was 
allowed by Powhattan to go to England, while one of the 
Smith's men agreed to stay with the Indians, as a kind 
of exchange of hostages. Hardly anything seems recorded 
of Nomentack's stay in England. All we know of him is 
that he was murdered by an Indian at the Bermudas in 
1610 when returning to his country with the English 
expedition. 

Now as The Silent Woman was first acted in 1609, the 
dates agree exactly, for Nomentack had only just come 
and gone again, and who was more likely to take an 
interest in this American Indian from Virginia than Sir 
Francis Bacon, who was a member of the Virginian 
Trading and Discovery Adventurers at the very time ? 
Indeed Bacon had taken interest in Indians before this 
in 1595. For when Raleigh had brought an Indian from 
Guiana in Queen Elizabeth's time, who but Bacon straight- 
way utilised the fact in his Masque of the Indian Prince, 
who had come from the mouth of the Amazon to be cured 
of his blindness in the sunshine of the Queen's favour and 
in the healing light of her kindly eyes. The Masque was 
played on Nov. 17, 1595, when Raleigh and the Indian 
had only very recently arrived. So Bacon struck the iron 
while it was hot. He seems, according to Ben Jonson, to 
have done the same in 1609 with regard to the Virginian 
Nomentack, for why in the world should Nomentack's 
name be dragged thus into the play, except as a hint that 
Bacon was being aimed at as a celebrity known for his 
interest in matters Virginian at the time. This know- 
ledge of Bacon's habits seems to have died out in the 



i6o PROOFS OF BACONIAN AUTHORSHIP 

present day, Spedding in his immense and exhaustive 
work never alludes to it. But I have noticed one or two 
things which throw a good light on it. Bacon's receipts 
and disbursements for the months of July-September 1618 
have been fortunately preserved among the State Papers. 
We read there in the column for disbursements prepared 
by his secretary : 

Sept. I, 16 1 8. To one that went to Verginia by your 

Lordship's order .... £7. 4 o 

Sept. 1 1, 161 8. To George the Verginian, by your Lord- 
ship's order o 10 o 

And in 1620, in a speech in Parliament, Bacon, while 
referring to the importance of the plantation of Virginia, 
said : " Sometimes a grain of mustard seed proves a great 
tree. Who can tell ? " 

Though it is hardly known or mentioned, the fact 
remains that Bacon held very strong views as to the 
importance of maintaining and increasing our plantations 
in America, and that he worked hard, both by his influence 
and by his money subscriptions, to lay the foundations of 
a strong colony beyond the seas. The grain of mustard 
seed has indeed become a great tree, and I think the 
millions of English-speaking people who now dwell beneath 
the branches of it, will rejoice to hear that the very 
greatest master of their native tongue wished to make 
them a strong nation, and foresaw their future greatness. 
And he not only wished, but gave effect to the wish, for 
there is evidence beyond all suspicion, as given above, 
that in the course of one fortnight he helped to send off 
a new colonist (and men were wanted then), and to relieve 
by his charity a needy Virginian.* 

Among the other estimable and surpassing qualities of 
Francis Bacon was this one — he was a true and foreseeing 
patriot. He, Southampton, Herbert, and other sub- 

* Since writing the above I have read the first volume of the Cambridge 
Modern History — The Renaissance (1902). I was both surprised and pleased 
to find in the chapter on the New World (pp. 62-66) the highest praise 
awarded to Francis Bacon, for the great, wise, and almost prophetic interest 
he took in the New World and its future. We are told that "American man 
in his physical and ethnological aspect strongly attracted Bacon's attention." 



DAMON AND PYTHIAS i6i 

scribers to the expeditions to the New World, together 
with Raleigh especially, must be reckoned among the true 
founders of the United States. Was this vast American 
continent to become mainly English or mainly Spanish ? 
that was their feeling, and they worked both in purse and 
person for English predominance. But my American 
cousins have take.n me a long way from Ben Jonson, and 
I must return. 

And just as Ben Jonson tried to amuse the gossips 
among his audience in 1609 with allusions to Bacon, 
Herbert, and Mistress Fitton, who had lately been married, 
so I think that in one of his later plays, Bartholomew Fair, 
in 1614, he treated his audience to a pretty plain exposi- 
tion of that remarkable triangular love-picture of Bacon, 
Southampton, and the First Lady of doubtful character, 
which meets us in the Sonnets. 

Jonson has two characters in this play, Bartholomew 
Fair, whom he names Damon and Pythias, and describes 
them as " two faithful friends of the Bankside," who 
" have but one drab." Considering the mention made 
of Burbage and the Bankside, and that it was Jonson 
who put in this remark, and that he, by our hypothesis, 
knew pretty well what was going on, it seems likely 
enough that the strange tale of the Sonnets is here alluded 
to. But the strangest part of the history is, that if the 
facts of the Sonnets were known well enough in 1614 to 
form part of a stage allusion like the above, how are we 
to account for the 1640 edition of the Sonnets being so 
manifestly ignorant of the true state of the case as to 
suppose all the Sonnets to be addressed to a woman ? 

This Damon and Pythias allusion of 1614 is noticed 
by few critics ; but Elze, Dowden, and Tyler seem to 
think that Shakespeare and Herbert may possibly be 
meant. No one has ever thought of suggesting Bacon 
for Damon and Southampton for Pythias, but when I 
tried it, I found the phraseology of the passage so curiously 
suggestive that I give the summary here. 

After some quarrelsome words to each other, in which 
Damon (Bacon ?) says : " Thou hast lain with her thyself, 

L 



i62 PROOFS OF BACONIAN AUTHORSHIP 

ril prove it in this place''' they subsequently go off to 
breakfast together, {Exeunt.) Presently Leatherhead, 
who is the showman of the Fair, says : 

" Now here come the friends again Pythias and Damon, 
And under their cloaks they have of bacon a gammon." 

The two friends Damon and Pythias now observe the 
presence of Hero (their " drab "), and Damon [i.e. Bacon) 
says : " 'Tis Hero.'' To which Leatherhead replies : 

Yes, but she will not be taken 
After sack and fresh herring with your 
Dunmow bacon. 

Pythias. You lie, it's Westfabian. 

Leatherhead. Westphalian, you should say. 

These " bacon " allusions are, to say the least, un- 
expected, and seem forced in for a purpose, but I do not 
press them as either direct or convincing — they are perhaps 
only an odd coincidence. Westfabian seems puzzling — 
I have met with the word elsewhere in Jonson's plays but 
cannot find the reference. Doubtless it referred to some 
current joke of the period. 

Hero, the drab of Damon and Pythias, seems to have 
been, like most gay women, rather particular in her eating. 
No bacon flitches even of Dunmow will take her fancy. 
Bacon at best was peasants' food, yokels' food. She has 
been used to sack and fresh herring, and such other 
appetising " snacks " as gallants are wont to regale their 
lady-loves with at the best places of " ordinary " resort. 
This sounds more like an allusion to some Lais or some 
fast citizen's wife, who enjoyed life when her husband 
was away, than to the Queen's young maid of honour. 
Moreover, Sonnet cxxxviii., by its variations as published 
in 1599 in the Passionate Pilgrim by the pirate Jaggard, 
shows the lady not to be young, though she was fond of 
saying so. 

I claim, having now brought these various distant 
and delicate, or rather indelicate, allusions into as clear a 
light as my limited knowledge of Elizabethan literature 
will allow, that a fair case is made out for Sir John Daw 
and Damon being Bacon, and Sir Amorous La-Foole 



THE SILENT WOMAN 163 

Herbert. In that case Hero would be the common drab, 
the loose-legged Lais whom Marston tells us about in 
connection with the fair-haired Cyprian, gallant Briscus. 
She might even be the brunette (Brownetta), the " chough 
with a white bill," the Dark Lady with a white face 
(powdered ?), who seems to have made her husband a 
cornuto without much fuss about it. Anyhow, we have 
Marston's authority that this Lais was the one " for whom 
good Tubrio took the mortal stab " ; and if Tubrio in 
this phrase be not poor Marlowe, I know not who he can 
be. So Hero would be a good name for Jonson to have 
chosen, if he knew that Marlowe had been her Leander 
and lost his life for her sake. 

But the Epicoene or Silent Woman seems a different 
lady, who married after the scandal, and Sir Amorous 
seems a different personage from the Pythias or Briscus, 
who both stand better for Southampton. Here Herbert 
and Mary Fitton take their places very suitably, while 
neither of them would suit the characters of Briseus and 
the " drab " Lais depicted by Marston in 1598, for the 
date is too early for young Herbert, who had not yet 
come to town permanently, and Mary Fitton at that date 
was a young maid of honour standing well with her Queen. 
But I say again these matters are neither so clear nor so 
important as is the evidence for Francis Bacon's identity 
in these shady concerns ; and that I claim is fairly estab- 
lished. 

And there is some novel evidence adduced concerning 
Mistress Fitton and the Dark Lady and their distinguish- 
ing characteristics in our remarks on Sonnet cxxxvii. 
But I would add here that since I wrote my extract 
above from the Silent Woman I have carefully examined 
Mr. Tyler's researches into the history of Mistress Mary 
Fitton in Chap. VIIL of his Shakespeare's Sonnets, and 
find they corroborate Ben Jonson's broad allusions of 
1609, both chronologically and generally, to such an extent 
as almost to settle the question whether Epiccene, or the 
Silent Woman, refers to Mary Fitton or not. 

I am surprised that neither Mr. Tyler nor any other 



i64 PROOFS OF BACONIAN AUTHORSHIP 

investigator has brought this play to bear on the vexed 
question of the Sonnets. Mr, Tyler's researches into 
Mistress Fitton's biography are much too long to quote 
here, but his whole Chap. VIII. (pp. 73-92) is worth 
reading in this connection. He shows she was married 
to Captain Polwhele in 1607, when between twenty-nine 
and thirty years of age, and that she had probably been 
married when very young and the marriage made null or 
disallowed. Ben's play came out in 1609, and he refers 
to the Epicoene woman as being married : " Tut, she 
is married now, and you cannot hurt her with any 
report " ; and the Sonnets had come out this same year, 
all tending to corroborate the Bacon- Herbert -Fitton 
allusions, which Jonson, though not alone in the know- 
ledge, was alone in daring to express. Moreover, there 
is testimony extant of the very best kind which, although 
only negative, yet goes far to show that the theory of 
the Shakespeare and Herbert intimacy has little or no 
foundation. 

John Aubrey, the Wiltshire antiquary, has a great 
deal to say about the various members of the Pembroke 
family — one of the chief in Wiltshire — and also many 
anecdotes about Shakespeare. In fact, lively gossip about 
both appears prominently in Aubrey's Lives of Eminent 
Persons, but nothing is said about their being acquainted 
or associated with one another. If there had been a 
tradition of any such connection, Aubrey would almost 
certainly have heard of it and recorded it, as he was an 
inveterate gossip-monger. I think, therefore, Shake- 
speare ma}' be dismissed, but not Herbert {pace Mr. Lee), 
for besides the proof from Pembroke's letters, which we 
shall hear presently, it does not seem to me altogether 
impossible that Bacon, who could never pass by a jest, 
should have scribbled on the cover of his private MS. 
copy of the Sonnets (or on some page of his copy) — in 
joking allusion to the only lover of Mary Fitton who suc- 
ceeded in becoming a father — those mystifying words, 
" To Mr. W. H., the Sole Begetter." What if this copy 
fell into Thorpe's possession and accounted for his odd 



REASONABLE PROBABILITY 165 

dedication ? I have referred to this more fully in my 
note to Sonnet cxxxviii. 

Neither can we dismiss Herbert on Mr. Lee's assertion 
that he did not possess the requisite goods look or youthful 
beauty. We know differently, and prefer the statement 
of a contemporary, Francis Davidson, who says in his 
dedication to Pembroke of his Poetical Rhapsody : 

I " Whose outward shape, though it most lovely bee, 
/ Doth in faire Robes, a fairer Soule attire." 

But surely we need not dwell longer on this point just 
now. That Shakespeare the play-actor should have a 
mistress among the maids of honour, and that Pembroke, 
the supreme aristocrat and rising favourite at court, should 
have first joined himself in the closest bonds of far more 
than ordinary friendship with an older man in a much 
inferior social position — an intimacy more like love than 
friendship — and then, treacherously unfaithful to the 
closest of bonds, robbed the actor of his mistress, and 
admitted the paternity of the bastard that ensued — well, 
to state it is enough almost to refute it. And, as we said, 
there is no evidence whatever for such a peculiar friendship, 
or indeed for any particular intimacy between Shakespeare 
and Pembroke at all. But the author of the Sonnets 
seems to allude to such things personally, and the author 
of the Plays, who is the same man, not only returns to the 
theme in Much Ado about Nothing (ii. i), but has given a 
variation of the same subject in The Two Gentlemen of 
Verona. The orthodox Shakespearians have been put to 
such straits that many of them have declared that the 
Sonnets dealing with this triangular tragedy are merely 
poetica,l conceits with which Shakespeare amused himself 
and his private friends, but had no facts behind them. 
My point is, that if we take Bacon as the writer of the 
Sonnets and Plays, the whole matter is moved from the 
region of the wellnigh impossible, to the region of reason- 
able probability, and more so still when we come to 
Pembroke's written letters. 

So that there may be no mistake about my views 



i66 PROOFS OF BACONIAN AUTHORSHIP 

regarding Southampton, Pembroke, and the author of the 
Sonnets, I will here say categorically that I am quite 
opposed to the opinion of those critics who hold that there 
is but one male friend in the Sonnets — a Mr. W. H., 
corresponding to William Herbert. And I am also quite 
opposed to the view that the Earl of Southampton was 
the one male friend in the Sonnets, and that William 
Herbert was not in the Sonnets, and in no close intimacy 
with the author at all. I hold it to be a fundamental 
fallacy, and an irretrievable error, to try and read one 
friendship backwards or forwards through all the Sonnets, 
when there are two entirely distinct series. Both of these 
noblemen were patrons of literature ; both were personal 
friends of the author, Southampton being the first by 
many years — at least five, and more likely eight years. 

The earlier Sonnets, which were consecrated to 
Southampton by the personal love of the author, are 
profaned by being mixed up with the latter Sonnets as 
commonly interpreted. Those who begin with Herbert 
and the date of 1598 are bound to read the Sonnets back- 
wards, and only, as Gerald Massey well says, " obfuscate 
the Sonnets and confuse the minds of their readers." I 
still think Massey's Southampton proof in his scarce book 
of 1888 the best extant for the early Procreation Sonnets, 
and putting Bacon for Shakespeare, as I do, it seems 
strengthened rather than otherwise. 

As for Essex, the third nobleman who was so closely 
intimate with Francis Bacon, there are but few possible 
allusions in the Sonnets, and these indirect and doubtful. 
But the Plays, as is well known, have several direct and 
undoubted references to Essex, especially that one in 
Henry V. which augured a glorious return of Essex from 
Ireland, with the rebellion crushed, and all London 
enthusiastically greeting the conquering hero — a most 
useful passage for dating the play. And then there is 
the play of Richard II. and the long tale of how the Queen 
suspected treason in it, and how much it was supposed to 
help the rebellious faction and rising of Essex and his 
followers. But in the whole story there is not a single 



THE HYPHEN 167 

word about Shakespeare's authorship of the play, nor is 
his name even mentioned. This seems unaccountable if 
Shakespeare were even only the suspected author or 
adapter ; whereas we know what an awkward matter it 
was for Bacon when he was called upon to deal with it 
officially. He even suggested that people might say it 
was one of his own tales. 

But beyond such suggestive evidence as we get from 
the Plays, there was in 1601, just after the tragic execution 
of Essex, which had been carried out without a word of 
reprieve from the imperious and sensitive Queen, a poetical 
essay on The Phoenix and Turtle, published in an appendix 
to Robert Chester's Love's Martyr, or Rosalind's Com- 
plaint (1601). This " deep-brained poem" was signed in 
full William Shake-speare, and although it is a most enig- 
matic composition, and was evidently to be so intended, 
yet there is no better solution before the public than that 
of Dr. Grosart, who was the first to suggest that the 
Phoenix was Queen Elizabeth and the male Turtle, Essex. 
These two were known to be lovers, and just then (1601) 
there was no other tragical event which was so likely to 
form the subject of this strange allegory, if indeed it had 
personal allusions at all. But in any case, I venture to 
say that this most peculiar and able poem seems much 
more akin to Bacon than to Shakespeare. Mr. Lee cannot 
make more out of it than any one else can, and adds, 
" Happily Shakespeare wrote nothing else of like char- 
acter." 

I think it was far more likely to come from the fertile 
brain of him who was cogitating at an early age upon such 
subjects as the Greatest Birth of Time, the Male Birth of 
Time {Partus Masculus Temporis), and other recondite 
and alhed matters, than from the active and shrewd 
money-getting factotum, " Shaxper, late of Stratford-on- 
Avon." Moreover, it is signed Shake-speare, with a 
decided hyphen. We are not surely to be classed with 
cranks if we suggest that there may be some mystification 
here. This is by no means the only place where this 
suspicious and uncalled-for hyphen appears. It is 



i68 PROOFS OF BACONIAN AUTHORSHIP 

as large as life on the title-page of shakes-speare's 
Sonnets in the original edition of 1609, and Ben Jonson 
is, I think, clearly aiming at this hyphen when he speaks 
of Cri-spinus or Cri-spinas in his Poetaster. 

Finally, as far as Essex and Shakespeare are con- 
cerned, it is admitted that there is not a scintilla of 
evidence that they were ever known to each other, or 
even brought casually together on any occasion. On the 
other hand, Francis Bacon and his brother Anthony were 
for many years most devoted friends of Essex, and the 
correspondence between them by letter and in other ways 
is extant and well known. 

We have next to deal with letters that passed between 
Bacon, Southampton, Pembroke, and Essex, and there- 
fore will say nothing more of the letters of Essex at 
present. 




CHAPTER X 

THE PROOF FROM CONTEMPORARY LETTERS AND BOOKS 

It is always a great advantage in a difficult controversy 
like the present one to get upon firm and undisputed 
ground. The disturbing thought has sometimes crossed 
my mind that perhaps, after all, this Bacon v. Shake- 
speare war was really only a Skiamachia, a contest in 
which, for the most part, only hazy and indefinite per- 
sonalities were concerned. Especially in the Sonnets it 
has often seemed as if the chief personages could hardly 
ever be detected walking in the clear light of day upon 
the common earth, but seem always, more or less, creatures 
of hypothesis or of the historic imagination. For instance, 
what do we really know of Mr. W. H. except per hypo- 
thesin ? May not the Sonnets be, as some have suggested, 
poetic conceits, Platonic idealisms after the Italian school 
then in fashion, or the mere vapourings of a " Pupil Pen " 
of some youthful genius in those Renaissance days when 
such poets were very plentiful ? When, too, I saw 
biographies of Shakespeare which filled six or seven 
hundred pages of close type, and afterwards found out 
by careful search the very few personal memoranda these 
bulky " Lives of Shakespeare " were built up on, I began 
to think seriously that there must be more fiction and 
imagination in such productions than honest, sober fact. 
These various considerations very nearly induced me 
to lay aside all thought of entering upon such a shadowy 
realm. But in the course of my reading I met with 
several letters which had passed between Bacon and 
Essex and Southampton, and also letters of Pembroke 
and Essex to Cecil. The originals had been preserved 
either at Hatfield House in Lord Salisbury's custody, or 

with the public records of our country in the State Paper 

169 



I70 PROOF FROM LETTERS AND BOOKS 

Office, or in the British Museum. Here I felt I was 
dealing not with the shadows, but with the very sub- 
stance of history. Here at least I was on terra firma. 
Such records and such custodians were beyond suspicion. 
They provided me with useful and suggestive evidence for 
Bacon which I had not noticed elsewhere. So I regained 
fresh confidence ; and in spite of the manner in which 
heretical opinions are generally received by critics, I will 
go on my way, unpromising as it is, for I think we are 
here dealing with one of the most interesting and amazing 
problems of literature. 

The first letter that I bring forward shall be one from 
Pembroke, dated June 19, 1601, a few months after 
the Mary Fitton scandal. His short time of imprison- 
ment in the Fleet for his serious offence — for such it 
was where a maid of honour was the victim — had been 
endured, and Pembroke was anxious to obtain per- 
mission to go abroad and put his troubles and disgrace 
behind him for a time, until the scandal had blown away. 
The Queen seems to have given him the required per- 
mission to go, and then revoked it. So he writes a letter 
to that important political personage Cecil, Lord Burgh- 
ley's son, containing the following passage, curiously 
connected with our subject : 

*' I cannot forbeare telling of you that yet I endure a grievous 
Imprisonment, and so (though not in the world's misjudging 
opinion) yet in myself, I feel still the same or a wors punishment, 
for doe you account him a freeman that is restrained from coming 
where he most desires to be, and debar'd from enjoying that 
comfort in respect of which all other earthly joys seeme miseries, 
though we have a whole world els to walk in ? In this vile case 
am I, whose miserable fortune it is, to be banished from the 
sight of her, in whose favor the ballance consisted of my misery 
or happines, and whose Incomparable beauty was the onely 
Sonne of my little world, and alone had power to give it life and 
heate. Now judge you whether this be a bondage or no : for 
my owne part I protest I think my fortune as slavish as any man's 
that lives fettered in a galley. You have sayd you loved me, 
and I have often found it ; but a greater testimony you can 
never show of it then to use your best means to ridd me out of 



PEMBROKE'S LETTER 171 

this hell, and then shall I account you the restorer of that which 
was farre dearer unto me than my life." 

Now a comparison of the wording of this letter with 
several of the Shakespeare Sonnets brings to notice many- 
unexpected analogies. If this resemblance stood alone, 
not much perhaps could be made of the likeness between 
Sonnet xxxiii., line 9, 

" Even so my sun one early morn did shine," 

and " the onely sonne of my little world " in the letter. 
But the most remarkable analogy and correspondence is 
with Sonnets lvii, and lviii. Mr. Tyler has worked this 
out carefully and at some length in his book (pp. 60, 61), 
and being a most orthodox believer in the traditional 
authorship of the Sonnets, ends thus : " These various 
resemblances are remarkable and striking, and as the 
letter was written from London, the possibility may 
suggest itself that, if it was written by the hand of Pem- 
broke, it was really composed by Shakespeare.^^ 

The words I have italicised seem very suggestive to me 
of something that clearly did not enter into Mr. Tyler's 
thoughts. I should say it was not Shakespeare that com- 
posed a feigned letter for his friend, for from all we hear 
and know he was about the last person to write a long 
letter, feigned or not, to any one ; but I should say it was 
far more likely to be composed by Bacon. Why, he was 
the very man who delighted in this rather peculiar vein 
of literature. We have several examples of his handiwork 
admitted to be genuine by the best and most unimpeach- 
able authority — Bacon's own statements and confession. 
And there are many more of this same semi-fictitious 
character, which, although never acknowledged by Bacon, 
have been accepted by Mr. Spedding as bearing so pal- 
pably the marks of Bacon's style, that these are given to 
him in that carefully edited work, Spedding's Life and 
Letters of Francis Bacon. Who so likely as Bacon to 
write a letter for his friend Pembroke, when he was so 
worried and so anxious, to put things in the best light 



172 PROOF FROM LETTERS AND BOOKS 

for Cecil and the Queen to read ? Indeed, Bacon had done 
the same thing several times before on behalf of his friend 
Essex, and perhaps for Southampton too, and must have 
been quite an old hand at it. The choice of Cecil, Bacon's 
cousin, as the recipient of the letter seems also to point 
to Bacon. But enough has been gained if we have suc- 
ceeded in placing ourselves on the firm ground of an un- 
doubted letter of Pembroke still extant, and in finding an 
evident connection both of phraseology and thought with 
the Shakespeare Sonnets. And as we are told on very 
high authority that there was only the slightest intimacy 
between Pembroke and Shakespeare — just an official 
recognition, perhaps, and no evidence of anything further 
— we are led to look for a more likely man upon whom to 
father the inspired epistle to Cecil ; and I think all who 
are unprejudiced will look {oculis irretortis) in one direction 
only, and find their quest. 

Next let us come to the letters of Essex. Here again 
we are upon firm historic ground, and we shall find Bacon 
pointed out as the far more probable author of the Sonnets. 

We will begin with the evidence of a strict Shake- 
spearian, who was known to be intensely anti-Baconian. 
It can therefore be accepted with the greatest confidence 
as not being prejudiced evidence in Bacon's favour. Our 
authority is dealing with the " sugred sonnets " and the 
" private friends " who knew of them, and he considers 
that Essex was one of these private friends. Seeing that 
Bacon knew Essex so very intimately, of course I quite 
agree. He goes on thus : 

" In the letters and verses of Essex will be found thoughts 
and expressions which almost prove his acquaintance with the 
Sonnets in MS. In a letter to the Queen, written from Croydon 
in the year 1595 or 1596, there occurs a likeness remarkable 
enough to suggest that Essex was a reader of the Sonnets as they 
were written. The Earl speaks, in absence from the Queen, 
when he is about to remount his horse for a gallop. He writes : 
' The delights of this place cannot make me unmindful of one in 
whose sweet company I have joyed so much as the happiest man 
doth in his highest contentment, and if my horse could run as fast 



ESSEX'S LETTER 173 

as my thoughts do fly, I would as often make mine eyes rich in 
beholding the treasure of yny love.' It is superfluous to point out 
the resemblance to the thought in two of the Sonnets." 

I suppose Sonnets L. and Li. are meant. He then 
takes another letter : 

"In Essex's letter of advice to the young Earl of Rutland, 
1595, there are one or two touches that look like reminiscences 
of the early Sonnets. Shakespeare says to his young friend, 
Sonnet Liv., after speaking of his outward graces : 

* Oh how much more doth beauty beauteous seem, 
By that sweet ornajnent that truth doth give,' &c. 

Essex tells his young friend — ' Some of these things may serve 
for ornaments, and all of them for delights, but the greatest 
ornament is the inward beauty of the mind. 

"Again, in a letter to the Queen dated May 1600, Essex 
writes : ' Four whole days have I meditated, most dear and 
adored sovereign, on these words that there are two kinds of 
angels — the one good, the other evil ; and that your Majesty 
wishes your servant to be accompanied by the good ; which 
sounds very like an echo of the 144th Sonnet. Of course the 
Earl might have seen this Sonnet in The Passionate Pilgrim the 
year before, but I hold that his acquaintanceship was much closer 
than that ; here is yet stronger proof. 

" In Shakespeare's Sonnet xxxv., the speaker excuses the 
person addressed because ' all tnen make faults,' and in a Sonnet 
written by the Earl of Essex 'in his trouble,' the speaker says 
'■ All men' s faults do teach her to suspect' . . . The thought and 
expression of Shakespeare must have been in the mind of Essex 
to have been so curiously turned." * 

My comment on the above is this : vv^hether the Hke- 
nesses be strong or faint, they point to Bacon much more 
than to Shakespeare. Especially is this so in the case of 
the letter to the young Earl of Rutland in 1595. This 
letter is really one of a set of three addressed by Essex as 
advice to the young Earl of Rutland when going on his 
travels. Now, these are all shown clearly by Mr. Spedding 
to be full of Bacon's phrases and turns of thought, and to 
have been written by Bacon for Essex ; and therefore Mr. 

* Massey, Sonnets, ist ed., p. 464. 



174 PROOF FROM LETTERS AND BOOKS 

Spedding actually includes them, in brackets, in his edition 
of Francis Bacon's Letters and Life (ii. pp. 6-20). So Bacon 
was making use of his own unpublished MS. of the Sonnets, 
which he had a perfect right to do, or else he had been 
favoured by Shakespeare with his copy and was plagiaris- 
ing from it, a thing neither likely nor proper, 

Spedding also mentions in the very next pages a letter 
of advice from Essex to Sir Fulke Greville. This too, he 
says, is " such a letter as Bacon would undoubtedly at 
this time have wished Essex to write and the Queen to 
know he had written." Moreover, it is " so very Baconian 
in matter and manner that I see no reason why every 
word of it (the opening and closing paragraphs excepted) 
might not have been written by Bacon himself in his 
own person." These and other feigned letters of Bacon, 
purporting to be between Essex, himself, and his brother 
Anthony, of which he admitted the authorship soon after- 
wards, show the great literary versatility of the man, his 
secret and deceiving ways, and, may I not add, give further 
plausibility to his having written the dedications of the Poems 
signed William Shakespeare, as well as the Poems them- 
selves and the Sonnets. But our Shakespearian Massey 
having thus unwittingly brought evidence against his 
own theory, proceeds to further instances : 

"There is a copy of verses in England's Helicon (1600), re- 
printed from John Dowland's ^ First Book of Sofigs ; or, Ayres 
of four parts, with a Tableture for the Lute' It is an address to 
' Cynthia ' : 

' My thoughts are winged with hopes, my hopes with love : 

Mount love unto the Moon in clearest night ! 

And say as she doth in the heavens move, 

In earth so wanes and waxeth my delight. 

And whisper this — but softly — in her ears, 

How oft Doubt hangs the head, and Trust sheds tears. 

And you, my thoughts that seem mistrust to carry. 

If for mistrust my Mistress you do blame ; 

Say, tho' you alter, yet, you do not vary. 

As she doth change and yet remain the same. 
Distrust doth enter hearts but not infect, 
And love is sweetest seasoned with suspect. 



CYNTHIA 175 

If she for this with clouds do mask her eyes, 

And make the heavens dark with her disdain ; 

With windy sighs disperse them in the skies, 

Or with thy tears derobe them into rain. 

Thoughts, hopes, and love, return to me no more, 
Till Cynthia shine as she hath shone before.' 

"These verses have been ascribed to Shakespeare on the 
authority of a commonplace book, which is preserved in the 
Hamburgh City Library. In this the lines are subscribed W. S., 
and the copy is dated 1606. The little poem is quite worthy of 
Shakespeare's sonneteering pen and period. And the internal 
evidence is sufficient to stamp it as Shakespeare's, for the manner 
and the music, with their respective felicities, are altogether 
Shakespearian of the earlier time. , . . The line 

' And love is sweetest seasoned with suspect,' 

surely comes from the same mint as 

' The ornament of beauty is suspect.' 

—Sonnet LXX. 
Also the line, 

' And make the heavens dark with her disdain,' 

is essentially Shakespearian ; one of those which occur at times, 
— such as this from Sonnet xviii. : 

' But thy eternal summer shall not fade.' 

Then the ' windy sighs ' and the tears for rain are just as recog- 
nisable as a bit of the Greek mythology. Here is one of the 
poet's pet trinkets of fancy ; with him sighs and tears, * poor 
fancy's followers,' are sorrow's wind and rain — 

' Storming her world with sorrow s wind and rain.' 

— A Lover's Lament. 
' The tvinds thy sighs.'' 

— Romeo and Juliet, iii. sc. 5. 

* We cannot call her winds and waters, sighs and tears.^ 

— Antony and Cleopatra. 

* Where are my tears ? Rain, rain, to lay this wind.' 

— Troilus and Cressida. 

' Give not a windy night a rainy morrow.' 

— Sonnet XC. 

{i.e. give not a night of sighs a morning of tears.) 

' The sun not yet thy sighs from heaven clears.' 

— Romeo and Juliet, ii. sc. 3. 



176 PROOF FROM LETTERS AND BOOKS 

In these last the mental likeness is very striking. I have not 
the least doubt of the poem being Shakespeare's own, and my 
suggestion is that it was written for the Earl of Essex, at a time 
when the Queen, 'Cynthia,' was not shining on him with her 
favouring smile, and that Essex had it set to music by Dowland 
to be sung at Court." 

Most likely Cynthia does refer to the Queen ; it was 
a very frequent and popular name for her. I do not 
know whether anything further has been discovered about 
the authorship, since the above was written so long ago 
as 1866. The mere initials W. S. do not make a very 
strong peg to hang a Shakespearian theory upon, and 
perhaps W. S. is now identified thoroughly — if so, Shake- 
speare and Bacon are both alike impossible — I *know 
nothing beyond the above statement of a Shakespearian 
expert. My comment again is, how much better Bacon 
fits in with all the circumstances. For we know that 
Bacon did compose a poem just when Essex was in danger 
of losing the Queen's favour, and that the object was 
*' directly tending and alluding to draw on her Majesty's 
reconcilement to my Lord (of Essex)," which Bacon 
himself tells us he " showed to a great person and one of 
my Lord's nearest friends," doubtless Southampton, " who 
commended it." It was meant to reach the Queen, and 
no doubt in some roundabout way this was arranged, for 
I do not find it stated absolutely that Bacon showed it 
to the Queen. It would come best from Essex. Any- 
how, there is a chance that we have here something 
by Bacon which experts pronounce to be genuine 
Shakespeare. 

But the best proof that Francis Bacon was a poet, 
and a busy one too, when he was enjoying the friendship 
of Essex and Southampton in the days of his early man- 
hood, is contained in a letter to Essex from Bacon at 
the end of 1594. Bacon admits the fact himself in an 
undoubtedly genuine letter preserved to us by his literary 
executor Rawley.* I hardly see what better, or more 

* Resuscitatio ; Supplement, p. 85. 



THE WATERS OF PARNASSUS 177 

direct, evidence we can have. I therefore reproduce it 
here literatim : 

To MY Lord of Essex. 

My singular good Lord, 

I may perceive by my Lord Keeper, that your Lordship, 
as the time served, signified unto him an intention to confer with 
his Lordship at better opportunity ; which in regard of your 
several and weighty occasions I have thought good to put your 
Lordship in remembrance of; that now, at his coming to the 
Court, it may be executed : desiring your good Lordship never- 
theless not to conceive out of this my diligence in soliciting this 
matter that I am either much in appetite or much in hope. For 
as for appetite, the waters of Parnassus are not like the ivaters of 
the Spaiv, that give a stomach ; but rather they quench appetite and 
desires" 6^r. &>c. 

There is not much of the " concealed Poet " in this 
expression. He admits that he has been quenching his 
thirst from the waters of that Castalian fount which springs 
from the foot of Mount Parnassus — or in plainer Enghsh, 
he admits that he has been writing poetry, and assumes 
pretty clearly that Essex knows the fact. And seeing, 
moreover, that only a short time before Essex's great 
friend Southampton had received a dedication copy of 
Venus and Adonis with this motto prefixed : 

" Vilia miretur vulgus ; mihi flavus Apollo 
Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua," 

where full draughts of the same Castalian waters of 
Parnassus are the author's beverage — I think we can 
shrewdly guess, and so no doubt could Essex, that 
both letter and Virgilian motto were in the fine Roman 
hand of Francis Bacon. Both Essex and Southampton 
must have known the Mystery of the Sonnets and 
Plays, and probably several other contemporaries, in- 
cluding Ben Jonson, also knew ; but it was a subject 
on which reticence was the best policy for every one 
concerned. Nothing but peril and vexation could arise 
from stirring in such a matter, and no good object 

M 



178 PROOF FROM BOOKS AND LETTERS 

could be gained by it. Even Ben Jonson's semi-con- 
cealed Aristophanic banter was threatened with the Star 
Chamber, so every one seemed to take the wise policy 
of a still tongue. 

There are other letters also between Bacon and Essex 
found among Bacon's papers and published by Rawley, 
and it looks very much as if Bacon wrote both the 
letters and the answers ; but we need not dwell on this 
subject. Bacon's "slimness" in such things is admitted. 

Let us now pass to the third noble friend, Southampton, 
who was so closely allied in friendship with Bacon from 
his early days at Gray's Inn until the Essex treason case. 
Then the two friends stood on opposite sides — Bacon a 
prosecutor, Southampton a defendant pleading almost 
for his life. This was a terrible time for Bacon, and he 
became most depressed and pessimistic ; there are signs 
of this evident enough both in the Sonnets and the Plays. 
Bacon became very unpopular for the part he took in 
the matter ; ill reports were spread against him — mendacia 
famcB he calls them — and his life was threatened, as he 
tells the Queen. All this appears to be hinted at pretty 
plainly in those Sonnets where he speaks so gloomily of 
'^ being the prey of worms, my body being dead,'''' and "the 
coward conquest of a wretches knife " (lxxiv.), and in that 
deeply pessimistic Sonnet a little earlier (lxvi.). Many 
of the Plays, too, are attributed to a " Dark Period," but 
of course the Shakespearians are obliged to give this 
"Dark Period" to Shakespeare, who to all appearances 
never had one. 

The result of the treason case was that Essex was 
beheaded, and Southampton imprisoned without apparent 
hope of release. But when the Queen died her successor, 
James VI. of Scotland, who had friendly feehngs towards 
the party to which Southampton belonged, released him, 
and reinstated him in his old position and privileges. 
Bacon, with a view to conciliate his former friend, wrote 
him a letter (April lo, 1603) just before his release from 
prison, and referring to their altered position to each 
other of late, said : " This great change hath wrought 



BACON'S RETICENCE 179 

in me no other change towards your Lordship than this, 
that I may safely be now that which I was truly before." 
However, it does not appear that the former very close 
friendship was ever reached again. The Bacon-South- 
ampton correspondence that has been preserved is much 
smaller than would have been expected. Perhaps Sonnets 
took the place of letters. The Shakespeare-Southampton 
correspondence is of course niL 

" Of Bacon's personal relations with the Earl of 
Southampton we know little or nothing. The intimate 
connection of both with the Earl of Essex must, no doubt, 
have brought them together ; but no letters had passed 
between them that I know of, nor has any record been 
preserved of any other communication." * But it seems 
that Bacon used his private influence after the trial with 
the Queen, and was helped by Cecil, and the Earl was 
" saved " as far as his life went. In drawing up the 
" Declaration of Treasons " Bacon had mentioned South- 
ampton's name as slightly as it was possible to do, evi- 
dently acting on the proverb " The least said the soonest 
mended.'''' I think Bacon often acted on this principle, 
and that herein we find a reasonable and sufficient 
explanation of several incidents in his life hard to 
understand otherwise. For instance, what can be the 
reason that he never utters a single syllable about 
Shakespeare or Ben Jonson — no letters seemed to have 
passed, their very names are unrecorded ? I suggest the 
explanation just referred to — there were literary mysteries 
and dead secrets connected with Bacon and known to 
these two, and so a strict reticence was adhered to. 
If Bacon had in any way referred to either or both of 
these famous men, his remarks would have been most 
surely weighed and considered, and that was just what 
Bacon did not want. The same explanation suits the 
absence of all correspondence (save the one letter pre- 
served by Bacon and quite innocuous) between Bacon 
and his intimate friend Southampton, to whom, as our 
theory goes, he addressed those intense Sonnets. They 

* Spedding, Letters and Life, iii. 75. 



i8o PROOF FROM BOOKS AND LETTERS 

were probably torn up and burnt so that no suspicions 
might arise — no scandal be revealed. 

The play of Richard II. and its connection with the 
foolish attempt of Essex and his party would be one 
reason why Bacon should not mention Shakespeare or 
bring him into any relation with himself. In fact, the 
way Shakespeare is ignored throughout all the official 
proceedings connected with this supposed treasonable 
play points out, in my opinion, that he was known not 
to be the author, and in no way really responsible for 
the play which so greatly offended the Queen. What if 
the Queen got to know that Bacon was the real author, 
and that he had to turn " Queen's evidence," so to speak, 
against the rebellious noblemen Essex and Southampton, 
who were his dearest friends ! Bacon's whole future 
depended on the course he might take. He was either 
an utterly ruined man, or else, by his compliance with 
the Queen's orders, there was a chance of still maintaining 
his position. 

The Sonnets, and the scandal half revealed in them, 
were also causes which would tend to make open corre- 
spondence between Bacon and Southampton avoided by 
both as much as possible. It has often been a subject 
of great surprise that Bacon did not reveal the secret of 
authorship at least shortly before he died. No obvious 
objection has been adduced. The scandal seems a possible 
reason, Southampton and Pembroke and others connected 
with them being alive. 

Ben Jonson knew the " secret " at an early date, and 
the evidence for that is given in the present volume. But 
it seems pretty clear that it was not long before Bacon 
and the " grand possessors " of the Shakespeare Plays 
induced that needy though vigorous and independent 
personality to come over to their side and help them to 
keep the secret. 

Let us next, still keeping on the terra firma of un- 
doubted and extant letters and books, hear what Francis 
Bacon says in them about his own literary powers and 
qualifications. In a short autobiographical passage in 



BACON'S OWN EVIDENCE i8i 

the preface to the Interpretation of Nature, written about 
the year 1603, Bacon says : 

" Whereas I believed myself born for the service of mankind, 
and reckoned the care of the common weal to be among those 
duties that are of public right, open to all aUke, even as the 
waters and the air, I therefore asked myself what most could 
advantage mankind, and for the performance of what tasks I 
seemed to be shaped by nature. 

" But when I searched, I found no work so meritorious as the 
discovery and development of the arts and inventions that tend to 
civilise the life of man . . . moreover, I found in my own nature 
a special adaptation for the contemplation of truth. For I had 
a mind at once versatile enough for that most important object — 
I mean the recognition of similitudes — and at the same time 
sufficiently steady and concentrated for the observation of subtle 
shades of difference ... I had no hankering after novelty, no 
blind admiration for antiquity," &c. &c. 

These extracts seem to point to just such a man as 
we should expect the author of the Shakespeare works to 
be — a man naturally supplied with the best tools for 
successfully carrying out the highest efforts of poetic and 
dramatic " invention." If Sir Henry Irving should retort 
that such mental tools are no use for the Drama unless 
one has practical knowledge and frequent practice in 
stage work and stage machinery, we have a good answer 
which, strange to say, was quite ignored, and I understand 
denied, by Sir Henry, viz., the fact that Francis Bacon 
was a man who especially had these practical require- 
ments from the share and interest he took in masques 
and interludes, both at Gray's Inn and among his aristo- 
cratic friends and at court. So that Bacon's own account 
of his special capabilities goes some way to prove the 
Bacon theory not altogether unreasonable or impossible. 

And in a letter to Lord Burghley in Jan. 1592 he 
explains what a wide and comprehensive range of mental 
action he was contemplating. " I have taken all know- 
ledge to be my province." Surely then Poetry and the 
Drama — the glories of the human intellect in the best 
days of Greece and Rome — would not be excluded ; nor 



t82 proof from books AND LETTERS 

Sonnets, the present glory of Italy and the rising fashion 
of the Elizabethan poets. This very letter, as it proceeds, 
reminds us of a Sonnet (No. ii.) which would be composed 
about the same- year (1591-2), and was addressed pre- 
sumably to a young man of about twenty. He warns 
him how rapidly a man ages, and tells the youth that 
when he is just double his present age of twenty, all his 
youth and beauty will be practically gone, or of no value. 
The Sonnet begins : 

" When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, 
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field. 
Thy youth's proud livery, so gaz'd on now, 
Will be a tatter'd weed of small worth held." 

But this is an unusual view to take, even for such 
irresponsible beings as poets are ; at forty many, or indeed 
most, men think themselves hardly past their prime. 

But what says Bacon in this letter to his uncle of the 
same year 159 1-2 ? "I wax now somewhat ancient ; 
one-and-thirty years is a great Deal of sand in the hour- 
glass." Is thirty-one in any degree ancient ? Surely 
not. But Bacon thought so. Do forty winters furrow 
the manly brow in such deep trenches that youth's proud 
livery is all departed ? Surely not so. But the writer 
of Sonnet 11. thought so. The inference is not absolutely 
certain of course, but it looks pretty obvious that the 
writer of the letter was also the writer of the Sonnet. 

Then there is the " Sonnet to Florio," which Florio 
himself describes as written by " a gentleman, a friend of 
mine that loved better to be a Poet than to be counted 
so." This Sonnet has been attributed to Shakespeare, 
on internal evidence, by two good critics, Professors 
Minto and Baynes ; but Bacon is much more likely than 
Shakespeare, for we know of no bashful reticence or con- 
cealment about Shakespeare and his poetry. The 
Johannes Factotum, the Shake-scene, the Poet-ape, was 
not likely to efface himself, or even to wish to do so, 
whereas Bacon says he was a " concealed poet." We 
will give this in full, for the book in which it occurs is so 
rare that no one except Minto seems to have quoted the 



THE FLORIO SONNET 183 

Sonnet, or to have said more than that it was very fine, 
and possibly Shakespeare's. It occurs just after the 
preface of Florio's Second Frutes, London, 1591-4, being 
the sole laudatory poem in the book, and by the date 
presumably earlier than Venus and Adonis and Lucrece. 
Professor Baynes says that " Mr. Minto's critical analysis 
and comparison of its thought and diction with Shake- 
speare's early work tends strongly to support the reality 
and value of the discovery." It is entitled : 

Phaethon to his friend Florio. 

Sweete friend whose name agrees with thy increase, 
How fit a rivall art thou of the Spring? 
For when each branche hath left his flourishing 
And green-lockt Sommers shadie pleasures cease : 

She makes the Winter's stormes repose in peace, 
And spends her franchise on each living thing : 
The dazies sprout, the little birds doo sing, 
Hearbes, gummes, and plants doo vaunt of their release, 

So when that all our English Witts lay dead, 
(Except the Laurell that is evergreene) 
Thou with thy Frutes our barrenness o'respread, 
And set thy flowrie pleasance to be seene. 

Sutch frutes, sutch flowrets of moralitie, 
Were nere before brought out of Italie. 

—Phaethon. 

John Florio says in his dedication of A Worlde of 
Wordes, 1st edition, 1598, that he had lived some years 
in the " paie and patronage " of the Earl of Southampton. 
Referring to the Sonnet in the last book, Second Frutes, 
and some criticism that had been passed upon it, he says 
" to the reader " : 

" There is another sort of leering curs, that rather snarle than 
bite, whereof I could instance in one, who lighting upon a good 
sonnet of a gentleman, a friend of mine, that loved better to be a 
Poet than to be counted so, called the auctor a rymer, notwith- 
standing he had more skill in good Poetrie, than my slie gentle- 
man seemed to have in good manners or humanitie. His name 
is H. S. Doe not take it for the Roman HS, for he is not of so 
much worth, unlesse it be as HS is twice as much and a halfe 
as halfe an As." 



i84 PROOF FROM BOOKS AND LETTERS 

The British Museum has a copy of Florio (edition 
1598) which once belonged to Dr. Farmer, who has written 
on the fly-leaf : " Perhaps Henry Salesbury is meant by 
H. S. in the preface. He published Gram. Britatl., 1593, 
dedicated to the Earl of Pembroke, Daniel's patron." And 
Florio calls H. S. a grammarian-pedante (in the preface). 

The author of the Sonnet of 159 1 might be Bacon or 
Samuel Daniel — both seem averse at that time to publish- 
ing their effusions — and both from their connection with 
the Pembroke and Southampton families would have 
every reason to know Florio well. Daniel seems the more 
likely, as he sent sonnets for Florio's later works. But 
there is this to be adduced in favour of Florio's allusion 
being to Bacon, that he uses words in this dedication 
of 1598 almost recalling the dedication of Lucrece. The 
words in Lucrece are : " What I have done is yours, what 
I have to do is yours, being part in all I have devoted 
yours." And Florio says : "In truth I acknowledge an 
entire debt, not only of my best knowledge but of all, yea 
of more than I know or can to your bounteous Lordship 
... to whom I owe and vow the years I have to live." * 

A strong objection which occurred to me was that the 
Sonnet followed the Italian model as Sidney always did, 
and that Shakespeare never did follow this model. But 
as in 1591 no poet had yet deviated from the Italian 
model, the objection did not seem insuperable. So it 
comes to this, that we have recently found a very fine 
Sonnet written by Shakespeare at or before the certain 
date 1591, and addressed to John Florio in praise of a 
book containing dialogues and aphorisms in parallel 
columns of English and Italian to help those speaking 
the one language to acquire a knowledge of the other. 
But at this early date, 1591, Shakespeare was hardly free 
of Burbage's stable-yard, or at most had not got much 

* Since I wrote the above I have read carefully Professor Minto's 
Appendix B. in his Characteristics, 1885, pp. 371-382, and I withdraw my 
suggestion that Daniel may have written the Sonnet. After going through 
Appendix B. there seems no room for Daniel or any one else except the 
author of the Shake-speare Plays and Poems. A more convincing piece of 
literary proof I have not read fur a long time. 



BACON AND FLORIO 185 

beyond " Hamlet revenge " in the Ghost part of the Ur- 
Hamlet. What had William Shakespeare, late of Strat- 
ford-on-Avon, to do with Italian dialogues and aphorisms ? 
These elegant matters were of interest to a courtier and 
aristocrat, and were most useful to lard their conversation 
and epistles, to give the fashionable unction that bespoke 
the travelled gentlemen — they would interest Bacon, and 
no doubt he would transfer some to his note-books. 
Aphorisms especially were in his line, and Bacon would 
enjoy the friendship and the conversation of the learned 
and resolute teacher, John Florio, as being an old proteg^ 
and dependant of the Southampton family ; but I doubt 
very much whether Shakespeare would have cared 
particularly for either the man or the book. And we 
must not forget that Florio told us plainly in 1598, that 
this friend of his who wrote the Sonnet was a gentleman 
" that loved better to be a Poet than to be counted one." 
This suits Bacon exactly, but does not suit Shakespeare 
at all. In 1591, I should say, there was not much of the 
" gentleman " about Shakespeare. 

But this is not the only apparent connection in verse 
between Bacon and Florio. There are some lines attached 
to another and later work of Florio — I mean his trans- 
lation of Montaigne's Essays in its second edition of 1613. 
This has been attributed to Shakespeare by good critics, 
but if my contention holds good, it will have to go to 
Bacon along with the other in Florio's Second Frutes. It 
is in the same Italian form of the Sonnet as is the earlier 
one of 1591, probably adopted in compliment to Florio. 
It is little known, and may therefore well be quoted here 
to accompany the other. It was unsigned, and indeed so 
cramped in at the foot of the page, that there was hardly 
room for any subscription by the author. 

It was entitled : 

Concerning the Honor of Bookes. 

Since Honor from the Honorer proceeds. 

How well do they deserve that memorie 

And leave in bookes for all posterities 

The names of worthyes, and their vertuous deedes 



i86 PROOF FROM BOOKS AND LETTERS 

When all their glorie els, like water weedes 

Without their element, presently dyes, 

And all their greatnes quite forgotten lyes : 

And when and how they florisht no man heedes 

How poore remembrances are statutes toomes 

And other monuments that men erect 

To Princes, which remaine in closed roomes 

Where but a few behold them ; in respect 

Of Bookes, that to the Universall eye 

Shew how they iiv'd, the other where they lye. 

The punctuation is peculiar, and the poem has appa- 
rently not been revised for the press. If it be Bacon's, 
the great interest he evidently took in Montaigne's Essays 
may be the cause of his contributing this solitary belated 
poem in 1613, his last attempt before the Psalms in 1624. 
Florio excuses, in a notice to the reader, the errata, 
which he confesses he had not properly attended to on 
account of his engagement at court which absorbed all his 
time. Again I enforce the argument that these hangers- 
on at court, and these foreigners attached to the house- 
holds of noblemen, were much more likely to be acquainted 
with Bacon than with Shakespeare. 

To take another instance. The Earl of Essex had in 
his service an Italian fencing-master named Vincentio 
Saviolo, who wrote a book, printed in London by John 
Wolfe in 1595, entitled, Vincentio Saviolo his Practice. 
In two Bookes. The first intr eating of the use of the Rapier 
and Dagger. The Second of Honor and honourable Quarrels. 
It was dedicated to Robert, Earle of Essex, and Ewe, &c. 

Now in the Shakespearian play oi As You Like It, 
written some time before 1600, the scene of Orlando's 
encounter with Charles, the Duke's wrestler, and the 
description by Touchstone of the different kinds of Lies, 
Retorts, and Replies were clearly drawn from Saviolo's 
courtly book. But who was the most likely man to 
possess and read this Italian's expensive and well-illus- 
trated book ? Would it be Bacon or Shakespeare ? 
Bacon was the intimate friend of Essex, quite at home 
with foreigners, be they Italians like Florio, or Spaniards 
like Perez, or Frenchmen like La Jessee. He was a 



THE INDIAN PRINCE 187 

frequenter of courts from his boyhood, and took a natural 
interest in the etiquette and codes of honour and " nice 
conduct " of an " honourable Quarrel " which were neces- 
sary parts of a courtier's education. But what were such 
things to William Shakespeare ? It was much more 
important for him to know how best to recover a debt, 
or invest his savings. 

But there are also poems never attributed to Shake- 
speare which we can justly give to Francis Bacon in 
preference to any one else. There is The Device of the 
Indian Prince, referred to and examined at length at the 
end of vol. viii. of Spedding's Bacon; herein we find a 
canzonet describing the Queen of a land " between the 
Old World and the New." This poem recalls the Shake- 
spearian Sonnets, and also the description of " the fair 
Vestal throned by the West," which most lovers of poetry 
know well enough where to look for. But as The Device 
of the Indian Prince is not on many book-shelves, the 
poem shall be judged as a whole. Here it is : 

" Sealed between the Old World and the New, 
A land there is no other land may touch, 
Where reigns a Queen in peace and honour true ; 
Stories or fables do describe no such. 
Never did Atlas such a burden bear. 
As she, in holding up the world opprest ; 
Supplying with her virtue everywhere 
Weakness of friends, errors of servants best. 
No nation breeds a warmer blood for war, 
And yet she calms them by her Majesty : 
No age hath ever wits refined so far 
And yet she calms them by her policy : 
To her thy son must make his sacrifice 
If he will have the morning of his eyes." 

The son referred to in the last two lines was the 
Indian Prince, who was born blind, and the verses (in 
sonnet form) are the words of the oracle declaring how 
his cure was to be effected. This same blind Indian 
Prince is supposed by some Baconians to appear in the 
centre of those remarkable typographical head-pieces 
which appeared at the top of the first page of many 



i88 PROOF FROM BOOKS AND LETTERS 

of the Shakespeare books in their original form, as the 
Sonnets, the first foho, and others, and also in some 
anonymous works, now known to be by Bacon, such as 
An Apologie of the Earle of Essex (London, 1603-4). 

This is a curious subject for inquiry, and stands on a 
different basis from Mrs. Gallup and her fellow-cipherers, 
but in this present volume I do not propose to discuss it. 
The speech of " Seeing Love," a prince of greater terri- 
tories than all the Indies, attired with feathers and armed 
with bowand arrows, is well worth referring to in Spedding's 
Bacon, viii. p. 389. It seems to me to be a covert Baconian 
attempt to gain the Queen — but it is accredited to Essex 
by all the extant evidence. If really by Essex, I agree 
with Spedding that it is impossible to distinguish Essex 
from Bacon in style. 

There is one more poem absolutely attributed to 
Bacon even by contemporary authority, I mean the 
" Farnaby " poem. The world's a bubble, which is a para- 
phrase of a Greek original, and has been already referred 
to when discussing the scholarship of the Shakespeare 
Works. No one but Bacon has been claimed as the 
author of this, and no one has ever said it might be 
Shakespeare's. In the first verse we have this excellent 
distich : 

" Who then to frail mortahty shall trust 
But limmes the water, or but writes in dust." 

Keats's well-known epitaph was : 

" Here lies one whose name was writ in water," 

and I suppose most of us would refer the fine thought to 
Shakespeare alone : 

" Noble Madam, 
Men's evil manners live in brass ; their virtues 
We write in water." 

But we see that the idea appears in Bacon's supposed 
contribution as above, and also in Bacon's acknowledged 
writings in the following form : 

" High treason is not written in ice, that when the body relenteth, 
the impression goeth away." — Charge of Owen (1615). 



THE FIVE BACON-POEMS 189 

And again this " re-appears " {pace Mr. Massey) in Shake- 
speare as : 

" This weak impress of love is as a figure 
TrencKd in ice, which with an hour's heat 
Dissolves to water, and doth lose his form." 

— Two Getiilcnutt of Verona, iii. 2. 

Such varied and intricate identities of thought tend 
undoubtedly to show that Bacon and Shakespeare at 
least were of one mind as to this poetical fancy. So there 
are five Poems quite outside the ordinarily accepted Shake- 
speare Poems and Sonnets, viz., the " Essex," the " two 
Florio's," the " Indian Prince," and the " Farnaby," 
which have every appearance of being the " concealed 
work " of Bacon. So that it appears neither impossible 
nor " irrational " that the Shakespeare Sonnets may be 
his concealed work also. 

Let us now approach these perplexing enigmas. 



CHAPTER X 

THE SONNETS 

"A sonnet is a moment's monument, 
Memorial from the soul's eternity. . . . 
A sonnet is a coin : its face reveals 
The soul— its converse to what power 'tis due." 

— D. G. ROSSETTI. 

At the very beginning there naturally rises the general 
question, " Do you take the autobiographical view or the 
impersonal one ? " 

The first, decidedly, is my answer. Nearly fifty years 
ago a famous Professor of English Literature, who is still 
(1902) alive and of most active intellect, put the auto- 
biographical view very plainly, and if anything it is 
clearer now than it was then. He says : 

" Criticism seems now to have pretty conclusively determined 
that the Sonnets of Shakespeare are, and can possibly be, nothing 
else than a poetical record of his own feelings and experience — 
a connected series of entries, as it were, in his own diary — during 
a certain period of his London life. . . Whoever does not to 
some extent hold this view, knows nothing about the subject. . . 
These Sonnets are autobiographic — distinctly, intensely, painfully 
autobiographic — although in a style and after a fashion of auto- 
biography so peculiar, that we can only cite Dante in his Vita 
Nuova and Tennyson in his In Memoriam as having furnished 
precisely similar examples of it." * 

In the Shakespeare Plays we never can be quite sure 
whether the author is alluding to himself or his friends, 
or not ; but in the Sonnets we feel we are dealing with 
the author in person. Hence their especial value. 

The other view is the Impersonal view, or, as it has 

* D. Masson, Shakespeare and Goethe {Essays), 1856-58, pp. 22-24. 

190 



THE WORK OF AN ARISTOCRAT 191 

been called, the German-subjective-transcendental-sym- 
bolic view. This view excludes autobiography or any 
personal allusion whatever. There are no half-measures 
here. One critic says : " After a careful reperusal I have 
come to the conclusion there is not a single Sonnet which is 
addressed to any individual at all.''^ This same gentleman 
holds that the " Two Loves " of Sonnet cxliv. are " the 
Celibate Church on the one hand, and the Reformed 
Church on the other," and much more in a similar strain. 
This dogmatic nonsense so enrages a rival critic of the 
Personal school, and so amuses him at the same time, 
that he says of such stuff : " It is good enough surely, if 
boundless folly can reach so far, to tickle Shakespeare in 
eternity, and make him feel a carnal gush of the old human 
jollity." 

The latest important work on the Sonnets takes a wise 
middle course, and is not blind either to the transcendental 
beauties or to the autobiographical facts. This is Mr. 
Wyndham's edition of the Poems of Shakespeare (1898). 
In his general introduction he most lovingly and lucidly 
examines the beauties of the various Sonnet sequences, 
and has laid more open to general view their many trans- 
cendental and introspective musings. He evidently esti- 
mates some of the Sonnets as the richest ore that has ever 
been drawn forth from the difficult mines of metaphysical 
meditation, and it seems as if his estimation could hardly 
be put aside by any rival sonnets, ancient or modern. My 
greatest surprise is that he marries these wonderful con- 
ceptions to the man William Shakespeare of Stratford-on- 
Avon without the slightest whisper of any forbidding of 
the banns. 

The Sonnets seem to be conceived in a lofty tone and 
written in an aristocratic atmosphere, and the same holds 
with the Love Poems. 

I hold firmly that all the earlier Sonnets have to do 
with the Earl of Southampton, and that Mr. Tyler's 
famous exposition of the Sonnets one by one, in which 
he advocated the Pembroke theory throughout, though 
most ingenious and, as I know, convincing to many able 



192 THE SONNETS 

Shakespearians, cannot possibly stand against the adverse 
evidence. He has depended too much on the Mr. W. H. 
of the Dedication — a very unsafe prop or foundation. It 
is highly improbable that Thorpe, when he wrote the 
Dedication, had any real knowledge of the true author. 
If he had known that the author had written them to or 
for William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, he certainly would 
not have put down in the very front of his venture, 
" Mr. W. H." 

Initials, too, are very unsafe foundations whereon to 
build — e.g. Daniel's Delia was in its first edition dedicated 
to M. P. The following editions were dedicated to the 
Countess of Pembroke, Mary Pembroke. How natural to 
insist that therefore M. P. stood for Mary Pembroke, but 
it seems that it stood for a friend of Daniel's named 
Pine. 

Perhaps this is the proper place for giving more fully 
my own view of the famous Dedication of the Sonnets, 
and Mr. W. H., " the onlie begetter." Some years ago 
I was reading the " Isham reprints," as they are caUed, a 
modern reproduction of certain unique books discovered 
by Mr. Charles Edmonds in a lumber room at Lamport 
HaU in 1867. One of them, a work by Rob. Southwell, 
S.J., contained a dedication to a certain Mathew Saunders, 
Esq., couched in the following terms : " W. H. wisheth 
with long life a prosperous achievement of his good desires," 
and speaking of the MS. from which the work was printed 
W. H. says : " Long have they lien hidden in obscuritie, 
and happily (haply ?) had never seen the light, had not a 
meere accident conveyed them to my hands." I thought 
of Mr. W. H. of the Sonnets at once, and going into the 
matter further I found that Southwell's poem was pro- 
cured by William Hall and printed for William Hall by 
G. Eld, who also printed Shakespeare's Sonnets and other 
publications for Thorpe. It also then struck me that 
Hall's name was written in full in front of Shakespeare's 
Sonnets, although I had never noticed it before — 

"To the onlie begetter of these insuing Sonnets, 
Mr. W. H. all HAPPINESSE," &c. 



THOMAS THORPE 193 

The next thing was to look up Thomas Thorpe's other 
dedications and examine their style. I found he was 
facetious and colloquial when addressing friends or equals, 
but most obsequious when addressing superiors and noble- 
men, such as Lord Pembroke, the William Herbert (as is 
supposed) of the Sonnets. 

Thorpe wrote a dedication for Marlowe's Hero and 
Leander, 1600 (ed. Blount), a facetious piece of bombast, 
in which he makes a pun on Blount's name (blunt) and 
calls him " Ned." He also wrote dedications to Healey's 
Epictetus in the editions of 1610, 1616, and 1636 {penes 
me), one to John Florio (1610), and the others to Lord 
Pembroke. I seemed to detect in all a somewhat affected 
vein of writing, and my interpretation of the famous 
dedication of the Sonnets was that Thorpe wrote it with 
punning humour to Mr. w. h. all, who had "procured" 
the MS. ; and since the first Sonnets were all about 
" begetting " a child to make the father's name endure, 
so he in his humorous vein calls Mr. Hall the " onlie 
begetter," and wishes him " happinesse," and that he 
too would become a father and thus enjoy " that etemitie 
promised " to fathers by our ever-living poet. And when 
Thorpe says " ever-living poet," it looks like a sly hit at 
the immense importance the poet gave to his own " eternal 
lines " : 

" So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, 
.So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." 

— Sonnet XVin. 

Here was an " ever-living poet " indeed. 

Mr. Hazlitt in his last work on Shakespear gives 
great credit to Thorpe for bestowing such an appropriate 
epithet as " ever-living " on Shakespeare, and in thus 
anticipating the verdict of later men ; but it does not 
seem that Thorpe was delivering an early verdict on the 
immortality of Shakespeare either as a dramatist or as a 
poet. I admit that Thorpe as a keen man of business 
was quite aware of the literary value of the Shake-speare 
MSS. if they could be obtained, and I have thought for a 
long time that in that singular preface to the Troilus and 

N 



194 THE SONNETS 

Cressida of 1609 we have possibly the bombastic and 
affected handiwork of T. T., and Mr. HazHtt, I see, 
" affirms " it ; by which he means, I hope, that he will 
not swear that T. T. is the author. Therein Thorpe (if 
it be he) undoubtedly predicts the future value of the 
Plays in the hands of the " grand possessors," but Thorpe 
was more likely to mean a commercial value than a 
literary one, and his remarks there do not seem to in- 
validate my suggestion as to the interpretation of the 
" onlie begetter." Indeed, Mr. W. H. appears to have 
been a " Hon's provider " or hterary jackal to Thorpe, 
who would be just as likely as not to call him in one of 
his facetious moods, " my Jack 'all." But enough about 
this enigmatical W. H. — he has been long enough a bone 
of contention between the Herbertites and Southamp- 
tonites. He has to descend somewhat in the social scale, 
as it seems ; but I believe he knew Marlowe, Blount, 
Florio, and Chapman, and had good chances for MS. finds. 

Whether William Hall was a bachelor, or a childless 
widower, or a man with a large family I have no means 
of knowing. I only tentatively suggest that Thorpe 
wishes him " happinesse " as the " onlie " man fortu- 
nate enough to be the " begetter " of such a precious 
literary bantling as the MS. of the Sonnets, a child 
promising an " eternitie " of fame, according to the rosy 
view of " our ever-living poet," as he confidently calls 
himself. 

I do not gather that either the author of the Sonnets 
or Thorpe thought definitely that the Sonnets would be 
immortal ; it was rather the Poems that were to be thus 
highly favoured. As for the Sonnets, they were anonymous 
adjuncts not intended for the public eye ; they were 
ambassadors coming privately to announce or accom- 
pany a Mighty Power able to immortalise the beloved 
one — a Power of Verse and a Monument of Glory that, 
like the Pyramids, should stand on such firm and broad 
bases (Sonnet cxxv.) as to be indestructible by the fiercest 
assaults of Time or Fortune. The Poems were published 
in 1593 and 1594, and appear to have had the author's 



THE ENIGMAS 195 

revision ; the ambassadors accompanying them were 
withheld from vulgar gaze, and although two of the suite 
were captured by unfair means and exhibited in 1599, 
the others kept the strictest incognito for another ten 
years, and then Thomas Thorpe and some others of his 
tribe (perhaps Edward Blount was one) brought them 
out from their hiding-place without so much as saying 
" by your leave," as far as we know. It is these ambas- 
sadors, and their mission and message, that must now 
take our attention. 

In dealing with the Sonnets, I shall try to read Bacon 
into them wherever he seems to have a proper claim to 
be there, and shall give some general views as to dates 
and sequences. But I shall not attempt to take them 
one by one and explain them in accordance with my 
preconceived theory : they are far too obscure and diffi- 
cult for such a treatment to be anything but a failure. 
Mr. Tyler tried this plan with a skill and perseverance 
that few could equal, but the result gained was not worth 
the labour. There are certain enigmas in the Sonnets, 
especially the Rival Poet or Poets, and the " Dark Lady," 
or the " woman coloured ill," which I think no one can 
pronounce to be solved, or ever solvable with our present 
imperfect knowledge and data. 

Here I simply give my preference, but by no means 
my conviction. I sometimes think the " Dark Lady " 
may have existed for Francis Bacon when Mary Fitton 
was a mere unformed girl at school. Gregor Sarrazin, a 
very capable German critic, places the " Dark Lady " 
episode chronologically as beginning about 1592, and he 
sees clear signs of the episode in the plays of Love's Labour's 
Lost, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and in Romeo and 
Juliet, all very early plays. Thus he holds that Mary 
Fitton, the maid of honour, J^orn 24th June 1578, and 
therefore in 1592 a girl of only fourteen, could not be the 
lady of the Sonnets or early Plays, could not have been 
the original of Rosaline or of the other graceful and 
quick-witted damsels who so often appeared in doublet 
and hose. Certainly there may have been an earlier 



196 THE SONNETS 

flame who was the original of the many early allusions 
and reminscences in the plays mentioned above, which 
are supposed now to date much about the years 1591- 
1593. This would make the author a younger man than 
was previously supposed, and would carry us back almost 
to the time when Shakespeare had not been very long 
in London, and had not yet become acquainted with 
Southampton. Thus the Shakespearian authorship would 
be rendered more unlikely than ever, for how could Shake- 
speare at that time have had any intrigue or even acquaint- 
ance with a lady of the type of the early Plays and Sonnets? 
For these types of delicate and aristocratic womanhood 
cannot possibly have had plebeian models. He might 
have known a Doll Tearsheet or a merry wife of a 
London citizen, but a Rosaline, a Beatrice, or a Juliet — 
never ! 

But Bacon had the entree into the best society — into 
Court society — among his cousins who were maids of 
honour, from his boyhood upwards. Was not he the 
Queen's " my young Lord Keeper " ? 

However, there is this to be considered as against 
Sarrazin's shrewd objection to Mistress Fitton. These 
early plays were being continually altered {more Baconico), 
and the " Dark Lady " types may have been later addi- 
tions to the plays, suggested by Mistress Fitton's remark- 
able personality. The originals, unrevised, and produced 
before Mistress Fitton came to Court in 1595, may have 
been quite devoid of such allusions. But when, as was 
the case with Love's Labour^s Lost, the play was revised 
for performance in 1597 before the Court, then the episode 
would be appropriately newly introduced, and Bacon 
and his friends, who were acquainted with what had 
been going on, would enjoy the allusions immensely, 
and all the more for the lady herself being present in 
the court circle. This play was the first of the Shake- 
speare Plays that was not anonymous. It was given 
to William Shakespeare. It was beginning to be neces- 
sary to name some author, so as to prevent curious 
inquiry. 



THE MYSTERY OF W. H. 197 

As to the Dark Lady, Mrs. Charlotte Carmichael 
Stopes says : 

"It is much more likely she was the educated wife of some 
wealthy city burgess, an acquaintance of Shakespeare's, to whose 
home, business, or friendship took him, and in whose parlour 
Shakespeare envied the virginal jacks for kissing 'the tender 
inwards of her hands.' Such a one, for instance, as Jacquinetta 
Vautrollier, the wife of Richard Field the printer, a French- 
woman, therefore probably dark and fascinating, who dwelt in 
Blackfriars near the theatre. To such a home it would be quite 
natural that Shakespeare might take his friend, and that the 
friend should charm the hostess, and displace the poet in her 
attentions. Field was a Stratford man and a friend of the poet. 
He printed Shakespeare's first poem, but transferred it soon, 
never printed another, and signed the 1596 petition against the 
existence of the Blackfriars Theatre."* 

Mrs. Stopes has also, as she thinks, discovered Mr. 
W. H. He was really the Sir William Harvey who 
married Southampton's mother in May 1598. She died 
in 1607, and left the best part of her stuff to her son, but 
the greater part to her husband, Sir William Harvey. 
Mrs. Stopes thinks a copy of the Sonnets was included 
in her household stuff, and that Sir W. H. read them and 
thought them worthy of being printed, and took them to 
Thorpe, who, seeing a W. H. on them, thought they had 
been addressed to Sir William Harvey himself. As to 
the W. H. on them, it stood most likely for William and 
Henry, and was inscribed in a true lover's knot. To lead 
Thorpe into error, and critics into confusion worse con- 
founded, it was only necessary that some one of the initials 
W. H. should have become owner of the MS. And this 
happened in the case of Sir William Harvey. 

I am afraid I cannot follow Mrs. Stopes in her high 
imaginative flights, and the William and Henry initials 
in a true lover's knot savour more of the transpontine 
drama and melodramatic sentiment of the Victorian age 
than the Elizabethan. 

* AiheiiiCiDJi, March 26, 1S98. 



igS THE SONNETS 

I think, however, after all, that we may safely say 
that we are considerably nearer to the personality of the 
so-called " Dark Lady " than we were twenty years ago 
or more, when that excellent critic Professor Dowden 
said, " We shall never discover the name of that woman 
who for a season could sound, as no one else, the instru- 
ment in Shakespeare's heart, from the lowest note to the 
top of the compass. To the eyes of no diver among the 
wrecks of time will that curious talisman gleam." 

Some believe confidently that we have recently found 
out the name of the lady who is the " Fit one " for all 
the circumstances. I cannot go quite so far as that. But 
I do think we are on the right track with regard to the 
lady who was so much in our poet's thoughts between 
1597 ^^^ 1601, or perhaps even a little earlier. Mary 
Fitton came to Court as we know in 1595, being then 
^^"sweet seventeen," and there would be plenty of time 
for Francis Bacon — a former gallant of the Inns of Court, 
a relative of some of the maids of honour, and one pos- 
sessing by birth and his circle of noble friends an entree 
to the highest society — to form an acquaintance with a 
lively, musical, masque-loving, forward girl as we have 
every reason to believe Mary Fitton was. She would 
doubtless be present, and Bacon too, when Lovers Labour'' s 
Lost was performed before the Queen at the usual Christmas 
court festivities in 1597. If these two were among the 
audience, they were also, on that occasion, on the stage 
as well, thinly disguised, to those who knew, as Biron and 
Rosaline. 

The play had been revised and enlarged especially for 
this great court function, and some of Biron-Bacon's finest 
love-speeches and descriptions had been added for the 
occasion. These additions in the author's later and im- 
proved manner have been acknowledged by critics, who 
have also said that in Biron were to be caught the true 
accents of the author himself — Shakespeare as they all 
thought. But no further explanation could they give, 
and one of the best of them could only say, referring to 
the splendid speech on Love by Biron in the fourth act, 



LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST 199 

" We must take Biron-Shakespeare at his word, and 
believe that in these vivid and tender emotions he found, 
during his early years in London, the stimulus which 
taught him to open his lips in song." * 

This critic and most of the other authorities take the 
original Love's Labour's Lost to be one of the very earliest 
of the Plays, and date it 1589 from certain internal evi- 
dence of a very strong character. I think this may be 
taken as almost an ascertained fact, and is of itself as 
good a Baconian argument as any I know of. For that 
Shakespeare should begin with such a play and such a 
subject, dealing, I mean, as it does with aristocratic court 
life in France, and in that part of the kingdom where 
Bacon had been, seems out of all probability. The first 
Love's Labour's Lost of 1589 could have nothing to do with 
Mary Fitton, who would then be an unformed girl of 
about eleven. She, clearly, could come into the play 
only when, after some years, it was revised, augmented, 
and played before the Queen and the court ladies in 
1597-8 at the Christmas festivities. 

But there might have been a different and original 
" Dark Lady " in the 1589 play and in the other early 
plays written before 1595, when first we hear of Mary 
Fitton at Court. Some of the German critics have thought 
that there was such a lady, and that Shakespeare's Aspasia 
was not an Englishwoman but an Italian, who was not 
beautiful, but well-educated and very musical, and that 
she left a deep impression on the poet, which he revived 
in his Cleopatra and Cressida. One German, Gregor 
Sarrazin, holds it not impossible {nicht fiir unmoglich) 
that Shakespeare met her in Venice when on his travels, 
and that the whole story was enacted in Italy and not 
in London. At first sight this must seem utterly absurd 
to the ordinary Shakespeare reader ; but it is not so 
absurd to such Shakespeare students as are acquainted 
with the marvellous general and local knowledge of Italy 
displayed in the Plays. The author must have been on 
the spot, we are inclined to say, again and again when 

* G. Brandes, William Shakespeare, i. 56. 



200 THE SONNETS 

he criticises so excellently the artistic work of Giulio 
Romano, and seems almost to have read his epitaph — 
when he speaks of the " traject," the common ferry which 
trades to Venice (Italian tragitto, Venetian traghetto), which 
appeared in all the Quartos and Folios as " tranect " and 
nonplussed the commentators for a long time. At length 
it was found out what the author meant and how correct 
he was, and what a local colour he could give. Surely 
the author must have visited these scenes in person, 
otherwise how could he have been so accurate ? Thus 
many Shakespearians say that their great Idol did visit 
Italy, and they give him from the autumn of 1592 to the 
summer of 1593 for the tour. He was then free, they 
say, for all the theatres were closed on account of the 
plague. 

It is not at all likely that Shakespeare would visit 
Italy alone, although poor students and others often made 
their way there on foot. If Shakespeare went at all he 
would go with his fellow-actors, so as to make a little 
money to pay expenses. That is possible, for to the 
Englishmen of that day Italy was the goal of their longing 
as travellers. It was a land where was the joy of life. 
Venice attracted the average man more even than Paris. 
Shakespeare may have gone to Venice and met a dark 
lady there ; but we have not a scrap of direct evidence 
about it. If Shakespeare did not go during the plague 
year, he could hardly have gone at any other time. 

Now with Bacon all is very different, and his oppor- 
tunities much greater for visiting and knowing about Italy. 
Between 1579 ^-^^ 1584 Bacon might have gone to Italy 
again and again for anything we know to the contrary. 
In that period we hardly know anything about his doings. 
He was presumably studying law at Gray's Inn, but 
lawyers have holidays and go abroad as well as other 
people. George Brandes says Bacon is " known to have 
visited Italy." * I cannot corroborate this, but I think 
it is likely to be correct. But even supposing Bacon never 
found time to visit Italy, there was his brother Anthony, 

* Brandes, William Shakespeare^ i. 1 35. 



THE INFLUENCE OF SIDNEY 201 

and many intimate friends, who knew Italy as well almost 
as they knew their own country. From these Bacon could 
get any knowledge of local matters that he might require. 
But the subject need not be pursued further ; enough has 
been said, I hope, to show that Bacon was a much more 
likely personage for " Dark Ladies," whether maids of 
honour or " Italian black-eyed devils," than was that 
" young man from the country " who left his twins behind 
him. Bacon was much more likely to know about Italy 
and its beautiful language than was the Warwickshire lad 
who was mainly master of his own patois only. 

The first thirteen Sonnets, or indeed the first seventeen, 
form the most certain and easy sequence of the whole 
collection. They were written, as everything seems to 
show, about the year 1591 and 1592, and the author had 
been evidently reading the Arcadia of Sidney, which was 
published in 1590, and had extracted much of the matter 
of the first thirteen Sonnets from that work. It looks as 
if the author had been asked to try his " pupil pen " in 
turning Sidney's prose into sonnets, so many and close are 
the parallels.* Sir Walter Scott thought that Sidney 
must have read the Sonnets, but from what we know of 
Bacon the reverse is much more likely. Bacon read the 
Arcadia, just as in after years he read Holinshed, and then 
turned it into magnificent poetry. Bacon's great natural 
gift, early and late, was that of adorning and glorifying as 
if by a magical alchemy the prose of other people. What- 
ever expressions other people might use, in whatever way 
they might present a tale or history. Bacon was able 
either to exalt or embellish. 

Besides, who more likely to read, and be interested in, 
the Arcadia than Bacon ? We should not expect the 
burgesses of Stratford, or their family either, to rave about 
the beauties of that elegant composition. The question 
of fines for not removing the dirt from their doorways was 
a much more burning question with some of them. But 
Bacon was a courtier and an elegant gentleman, to whom 

* Cf. Massey's Secret Drama of Shakespeare^s Sonnets, priv. edit. 1888. pp. 
73. &c. 



202 THE SONNETS 

such a work would appeal. After he had written the 
first thirteen Sonnets, it is probable that Sidney's 
next work, the sonnets in Astrophel and Stella, fell into 
Bacon's hand in 1591 or thereabouts (published in 1591), 
for after Sonnet xiii., but not before, we find clear traces of 
likeness to and borrowing from this later work of Sidney. 

As to the subject of these first seventeen Sonnets, 
called "Procreation Sonnets," we have the best of evidence. 
For there was a scheme in hand as early as 1590 to induce 
the young Earl of Southampton to marry. He was 
Burghley's ward, and it was the interest of that astute 
politician to capture the young nobleman and his political 
influence for his own family faction. He therefore desired 
a marriage between the rising youth and his own grand- 
daughter. Bacon belonged to Burghley's faction, and it 
would further his worldly prospects very much if he could 
show that he had done his share in bringing the young 
Earl up to the marriage mark. So he opened fire on his 
young acquaintance, who had not long joined his own 
Society of Gray's Inn, and delivered thirteen similar shots 
in succession and eventually reached seventeen. But 
though skilfully aimed they failed to effect their purpose. 

By a singular coincidence there was, nearly eight 
years afterwards (1598), another rising young nobleman 
whom his friends were persuading to marry at a similarly 
early age, and what is still more strange, to another grand- 
daughter of the same Lord Burghley. This was William 
Herbert, at that time known as " young Lord Harbert," 
his father being alive. This was the youth, say the 
Herbertites, to whom the Procreation Sonnets were ad- 
dressed in 1598. This was the Mr. W. H. of the dedica- 
tion — and no other youth will suit. " Why," say they in 
derision, " in 1598 the Earl of Southampton was a man of 
twenty-five with a full beard : how could Shakespeare 
possibly call him his ' cherub ' and his ' darling boy ' ? " 
But these Herbertites have gone wrong in their dates, and 
1598 is an impossible date for many of the Sonnets. 
There are such clear parallels and allusions to Venus 
and Adonis, Lucrece, and to the sending of this poem to 



THE "PROCREATION" SONNETS 203 

Southampton in 1593-4, and to the early plays, in many 
of these Sonnets, and in the Procreation Sonnets too, that 
such ones cannot have been written later than 1594 as an 
extreme limit. But they say Herbert first came into 
residence in town in j[^^, and "thaFTFiere was the early 
marriage episode with Burghley's grand-daughter, and 
then was Shakespeare's first acquaintance with him. 
Chronology upsets this altogether. I helped the Herbert- 
ites by three years, without intending it, when I dis- 
covered the new fact that young Herbert was three months 
or more in London towards the end of the year 1595, and 
that his relations were even then trying to marry him 
{really a cherub and darling boy of about fifteen) into the 
Carew family. But these three years, and these strangely 
similar circumstances, are not much good to the Herbert- 
ites. They want eight years at least, and the dates must 
be carried back before Lucrece, and even 1595 is no use 
in such circumstances. 

However, the Shakespearians must fight their own 
battles, and meet their own difftculties. 

I suggest, to return to my present object, that there 
is not much " difficulty " in our believing that Francis 
Bacon, of Gray's Inn, wrote the Procreation Sonnets i.- 
XVII. to his young acquaintance the Earl of Southampton 
about the years 1591-2, after a close study of Sir Philip 
Sidney's recently published and fashionable works. 

I also have a strong impression that it was Daniel's 
Delia which supplied Bacon with a model for the form of 
verse, which is English and not the ordinary Italian form. 
This was a new departure, dating about 1592, or earlier if 
Daniel's sonnets had been seen by Bacon in MS. But 
the date would not be before 1591, for the Sonnet to 
Florio is of that year, and is in the ordinary Italian style 
then in vogue. 

Sonnets xviii.-xxvi. form another pretty plain 
sequence. Some were sent to Southampton with Lucrece 
or perhaps a little earlier, so the date would be about 1594. 
Some might have been sent with Venus and Adonis (1593). 
The last four lines of Sonnet xviii. were more likely, I 



204 THE SONNETS 

think, to accompany Venus and Adonis ; for, besides 
Southampton's name being immortaUsed and rescued from 
Death in the dedication, he himself was figured in the 
young Adonis : 

" Nor shall Death brag thou wanderst in his shade, 
When in eternal lines to time thou growest ; 

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, 
So long lives //it's, and //n's gives life to thee." 

The words I have put in itahcs could hardly refer to the 
Sonnet itself, which was of a private nature and only 
meant for a small circle of friends. Bacon was doubtless 
as proud of the " first heire " of his invention in poetry, 
as he was of his first heir in philosophy. The greatest Birth 
of Time. 

A likely date for many of the Sonnets is midsummer 
or autumn 1593, when the theatres and law-courts were 
closed for the plague, and Bacon was lying somewhat of 
an invalid at Twickenham, and able to do little else but 
compose verses. It has been remarked that there is a 
decidedly autumnal tint about many of these Sonnets, 
and for some reason in Sonnet civ. the word Autumne is 
put in italics in the original edition, being the only one of 
the four seasons mentioned in the Sonnet which receives 
that destinction. 

The succeeding autumn of 1594 would also be very 
suitable for some of the Sonnets, for we hear : " Mr. F. 
Bacon was now at Twickenham Lodge, where he had been 
some time alone." He writes on i6th Oct. 1594 : " One 
day draweth on another, and I am well pleased in my 
being here ; for methinks solitariness coUecteth the mind, 
as shutting the eyes does the sight." And a little later, 
viz. on 25th Jan. 1594-5, Bacon at Twickenham writes 
to his brother Anthony : " I have here an idle pen or two. 
... I pray send me somewhat else for them to write 
out," &c.* These were his scriveners, who had, we fancy, 
a good deal of work to do, now and then, on the Shake- 
speare Plays and Poems. 

Bacon, too, was about this time getting worried and 

* Birch, Mi-moirs of the Rci^'ii of Queen Elizabeth, i. 189, 1 98, &c. 



MELANCHOLY SONNETS 205 

depressed because neither his chief hope Essex, nor his 
friend the Vice-Chamberlain — who, by the way, was Sir 
Thomas Heneage, who had just become Southampton's 
father-in-law — seemed to be able to induce the Queen to 
give him promotion. All this would affect Bacon and his 
literary work about this time. But there was no autumnal 
decay about Shakespeare's present prospects ; he was 
flourishing like a green bay tree, and putting by money 
every year. 

Sonnets xxvii. and xxviii., the next two, from their 
striking parallelism to Lucrece and Romeo and Juliet, fall 
about the same period — perhaps the same autumn. The 
author had paid a visit to his friend, and had come back 
tired and worn-out, not being, just then, very strong, if 
my contention be correct, and the journey might well be 
from Twickenham to London, or wherever Southampton 
happened to be. The Sonnets of this early period show a 
very melancholy feeling in the author ; the thought that 
the Beauty of Nature and all the fair " shows " of the 
world are but passing shadows, and that Time, the great 
and cruel tyrant, wipes them all away. From the sequence 
xviii.-xxvi. I will extract, for the sake of a few annota- 
tions, 

Sonnet xxiii. 

As an unperfect actor on the stage 
Who with his feare is put beside his part. 
Or some fierce thing repleat with too much rage. 
Whose strength's abundance weakens his owne heart ; 
So I for feare of trust forget to say 
The perfect ceremony of love's rite, 
And in mine owne love's strength seeme to decay, 
O'ercharged with burthen of mine owne love's might : 
O let my books be then the eloquence. 
And dumb presagers of my speaking brest, 
Who pleade for love and look for recompence, 
More then that tonge that more hath more exprest. 
O learne to read what silent love hath writ, 
To heare with eies belongs to love's fine wiht {sic). 

The meaning seems to be that the author is too much 
overcome by nervous hesitancy to do himself justice in 



2o6 THE SONNETS 

declaring his love for his friend. He cannot trust himself 
to say all that is in his breast (line 5), and in his dedication, 
which is one of the ceremonial parts of love's rite (line 6) 
he fears to make it complete and " perfect " by his own 
true name at the foot. Personally his feelings are so 
strong that they overcome him to weaken the expression 
of the love he really has (lines 7, 8). He begs that his 
books, his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, may be eloquent 
for him in their way ; they are dumb, and therefore when 
they interpret the feelings of his speaking breast, there 
will be no tremor of the voice or choked utterance 
(lines 9-12). My love, he says, thus expressed by my 
" dumb presagers," is of course a silent love, and your 
ears cannot catch its quality, but you have eyes to read, 
and eyes often play the finer part in Love's domain 
(lines 13, 14). 

May it not also be that the poet describes his love as 
silent, because he speaks not of or from himself, and 
therefore is personally silent ? Another man, the man 
William Shake-speare, speaks in person and signs the 
books. 

Bacon seems to suit this Sonnet much better than any 
one else, and I think the same may be said even more 
strongly of Sonnet xxvi., which is the concluding Sonnet 
and renvoi of the sequence. This is the Sonnet which 
has such a striking resemblance to the written dedication 
of Lucrece, and where in the very last line he speaks of 
showing his head, and indeed it comes to showing his tail 
too, as I have previously endeavoured to place before my 
readers. I will quote the last six lines because I have a 
commentary of my own : 

" Till whatsoever star that guides my moving, 

Points on me graciously with fair aspect, 

And puts apparel on my tattered loving, 

To show me worthy of thy sweet respect : 

Till then I dare to boast how I do love thee, 

Till then not show my head where thou may'st prove me." 

I think the poet refers to his auspicious star the Earl 
of Essex, by whose guiding influence he hoped to " move 



BACON'S "NORTHERN JOURNEY" 207 

up " considerably in the political world. As for the 
" apparel " to be put on his tattered position it would be 
robes of high office — high legal office — which he hoped 
the persistent efforts of his patron and friend would enable 
him soon to assume. These would hide the tattered 
poverty of the portionless younger son and the struggling 
lawyer, and would make him worthy of his loved one's 
respect. And then, when that position was gained, the 
poet might " dare to boast " of his hitherto concealed 
friendship and love, and " show his head " — his mono- 
gram in Lucrece — to prove his identity, pg or Fra. B. 

I may be altogether on the wrong track. If so, there 
is a remarkable series of coincidences here, all pointing to 
Bacon : that fact can hardly be denied in any case. 

Sonnets xxvii. and xxviii. 

These two Sonnets refer to a journey taken to a place 
some distance from London, in which the writer became 
"weary with toil," and his "limbs with travel tired." 
Fortunately we can here fix with a great degree of prob- 
ability what this particular journey was, and also that it 
was Bacon who was the weary traveller. 

We arrive at it in this way. The preceding Sonnet, 
XXVI., was the Sonnet that accompanied Lucrece, as we 
have just seen ; and since Lucrece was registered in the 
Stationers' Company's books under date May 5, 1594, we 
may place the date of the Sonnet in the earlier months of 
1594. Since the order of the Sonnets is (with a few ex- 
ceptions, arising possibly from misplaced leaves) generally 
chronological, we may expect the date of the next Sonnet, 
XXVII., to be somewhat later, in the summer perhaps of the 
same year, for summer vacation was the time for travel. 
And that is just what we find to be the case, for in July 
1594 Francis Bacon took his " northern journey " for a 
political purpose in the Queen's interest, and of course in 
the interest of Essex as well. He, however, was unfortu- 
nate with regard to his health during the journey, and 
on the 20th July 1594 wrote from Huntingdon to the 
Queen telling her that he was delayed there ; but his 



2o8 THE SONNETS 

illness did not confine him long, for we find him in London 
again by the end of the month, and well.* 

This then is the journey that suits these two Sonnets 
excellently, and we must remember that we know of no 
journey of Shakespeare with such accuracy of date. 

Further on in the Sonnets (xlviii.-li.) we have another 
allusion to a journey that the poet was taking, but whether 
that was this " northern journey," or some other journey 
for Essex specially, cannot be decided. Bacon tells us in 
his Apology for Essex, " It is well known how I did many 
years since dedicate my travels and studies to the use of 
my Lord of Essex." By " travels " he may mean here 
" labours," but no doubt he often travelled about for 
Essex in the modern sense of the word. But the chief 
proof connected with these Sonnets is that Bacon's 
northern journey exactly fits in, while there is nothing 
whatever of Shakespeare's journeys that we know with 
any certainty. 

Sonnets xxix.-xxxvii. 

These Sonnets seem to refer to a period of disgrace, 
and consequent depression, in the writer's life — he has 
had disappointments — " I sigh the lack of many a thing 
I sought " (XXX.). He had depressing thoughts of death 
(xxxii.), and the great scandal of his " bewailed guilt " 
makes a gulf of separation between them, for now his 
friend cannot, having regard to his own position and 
credit, publiclj^ make a show of kindly affection to him 
(xxxvi. ; cf. also cix.). Still the poet takes comfort from 
his own heart-union with his friend (xxxvii.), though he 
cannot let the world know it (xxxvi.). Again Bacon 
suits better than Shakespeare. Bacon felt keenly the 
failure of his hopes of advance through Essex, and possibly 
there was a scandal just now too, for Bacon writes to 
Cecil as if he had shielded him more than once. 

From Sonnet xxxii. we can get a probable date, 
which would be 1598-9 ; for John Marston began his 
literary career in 1598 by publishing Pygmalion's Image, 

* C/. Spedding's Li/e and Letters, viii. 305. 



PYGMALION'S IMAGE 209 

which was of the style of Venus and Adonis, and was 
received with much favour and laudation as soon as it 
was out. If our date be correct, four years had passed 
since Lucrece had been offered to Southampton in 1594. 
The poet at that time promised to give further and better 
proofs of his love and of his immortalising verse, but 
years had passed and he remained dumb. This is referred 
to in several Sonnets, and various excuses are given. In 
this particular Sonnet (xxxii.) the excuse is that he had 
been outstripped by others, and that his Muse had not 
grown as he had thought and boasted that it would. But 
he hints (line 12) that though their style may be better 
than this, yet they cannot surpass his love for his friend. 
He seems to augur his own approaching death, and begs 
this request of his friend : 

" O then vouchsafe me but this loving thought : 
Had my fi-iend's muse grown with the growing age, 
A dearer birth than this his love had brought, 
To march in ranks of better equipage. 

But since he died, and poets better prove, 
Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love." 

Since Lucrece had been dedicated to Southampton in 
1594, the principal poets who had given anything really 
good to the world of letters had been Chapman, Daniel, 
and Marston. The first two of these " rival poets " are 
referred to, as I believe, in the Sonnet-sequence (lxxv.- 
Lxxxvi.) further on. Here it is Marston and his Pyg- 
malion's Image which is alluded to. Marston speaks 
of his 

" Stanzas like odd bands 
Of voluntaries and mercenarians : 
Which like soldados of our warlike age, 
March 7-ich bedight in warlike equipas^er 

So here in all probability we have the source of the similar 
and parallel line in the Sonnet. I believe Mr. Tyler has 
the credit of first noticing this, and he justly says : " The 
analogy is too close to be easily explained away. But, 
it may be said, is it not possible that Marston borrowed 
from Shakespeare ? To this question the answer must 

o 



2IO THE SONNETS 

be given, that the congruity which is absent in Shake- 
speare is clearly seen in Marston." * The " bringing a 
dearer birth " to march in better-equipped ranks can 
scarcely seem altogether suitable, while Marston's simile 
is entirely suitable. Therefore we may say pretty con- 
fidently that Marston's poem preceded this Sonnet, and 
so the autumn of 1598 or 1599 is a probable date of 
the writing of this Sonnet. This is the very period 
when, as we know, Bacon was greatly depressed and 
thought much about death — perhaps suicide — and wrote 
to the Queen and others about the untrue libels {men- 
dacia famcB) that the vulgar people were spreading against 
him, and that his life had been threatened. But all 
this is referred to in another sequence (lxxv.-lxxxvi.), 
to which this Sonnet may also well belong. There we 
see the same prospect of death, and the same kind of 
reference to other poets {alien poets) who are better than 
he is, and before whom his Muse is " barren " and dumb. 
He calls his muse or verse a "birth." This brings to 
mind Bacon's greatest Birth of Time, his early opus 
magnum. 

But it must not be forgotten that Nash in his preface 
to Greene's Menaphon uses the phrase " march in equipage 
of honour " in 1589, so thus Sonnet xxxii. may have 
taken the phrase from him before Marston wrote his lines. 

Sonnet xxxvi. 

It is mentioned elsewhere how strange a thing it is 
that we hear of no personal relationship between Bacon 
and Southampton. It surprised Spedding very much, 
and when I first looked into the index of Spedding's Life 
and Letters of Lord Bacon for the volume containing the 
years 1561-1595 — being the first thirty-four years of 
Bacon's life — and could not find the name of Southampton 
in the index at all, I confess I was equally, if not more, 
surprised. I had reason to be more surprised than 
Spedding, for he, who knew Bacon's correspondence 
better than any man in the world, did not know, as I do 

* Tyler, Shakfspea7-i s Sonnets, 1 890, p. 37. 



BACON AND SOUTHAMPTON 211 

now, of Bacon's love for Southampton and of his dedica- 
tion to him of Venus and Adonis and Lucrece. 

It appears from Spedding's exhaustive researches that 
there is no record of any letters or any other communi- 
cations having passed between them until the letter of 
1603, when Bacon was over forty-two years old and 
Southampton over thirty. And yet, putting aside the 
whole history of the close Platonic friendship revealed 
in the Sonnets, there was, as Spedding admits, such an 
intimate connection existing between both of them and 
Essex, that they must have been brought together fre- 
quently and on intimate terms. 

Why then this burning of all letters, or, if not burnt, 
why this absence of all correspondence between such 
important personages, when, as we know well, Bacon 
had preserved hundreds of letters from far less interesting 
people ? And why, when Bacon was drawing up the 
" Declaration of Treason " in the Essex rebellion case, 
did he mention Southampton's name as little as he pos- 
sibly could ? This Sonnet xxxvi. supplies the answer, 
especially the last six lines : 



/; 



" I may not evermore acknowledge thee 
Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame, \^', 

Nor thou with publike kindnesse honour me, t' >\. 

Unlesse thou take that honour from thy name ; 
But doe not so, I love thee in such sort, 
As thou being mine, mine is thy good report." 

And if we compare this with Sonnet lxxxix., where he 
speaks of his " offence" and lameness, and says he will 
try to behave as a stranger to Southampton : 

> 
" I will acquaintance strangle and looke strange ; 
Be absent from thy walkes ; and in my tongue 
Thy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell 
Least I (too much prophane) should do it wronge ; 
And haplie of our old acquaintance tell," 

by the comparison we shall see plainly why Southampton 
is so persistently ignored by Bacon, and also, why the 
mystery of the Plays and Sonnets was never revealed. 



212 THE SONNETS 

It might " haply of their old acquaintance tell," and also 
it would " take honour from his loved one's name." 

This is a cryptic expression quite in Bacon's style, 
and helps considerably the increasing body of evidence 
that we have gathered. For it points to Southampton, 
since the anagram of his name was 

Henry Southampton = Thy Sta.nvp&-Honfltir. 

or 
Henrie Southampton = The Stampe in Honour. 

There were also two other published anagrams of his full 
name, and in both of these Honour occurs prominently — 

Henry Wriothesley Earle of Southampton. 
Anagrams. 

1. Thy Honottr is worth the praise of all men. 

2. Vertue is thy Honour : O the praise of all men.* 

All this looks very much as if the name from which honour 
could be taken was Henry Southampton. This was the 
same young nobleman whom Nash addressed towards 
the end of 1592 in Fierce Penilesse as "The Matchless 
image of Honour " and " Jove's eagle-borne Ganymede." 
I do not attach reproach to the term Ganymede applied 
to Southampton by Nash in 1592, though it is not a 
pleasant name for a lad in any rank of society, and it is 
just possible that Nash knew of Francis Bacon's intense 
admiration for the young Earl. But it is one thing to 
be called a Ganymede when you are one of " the glistering 
attendants of the true Diana " (Elizabeth), and it is 
another and a very different thing to be called a Gany- 
mede when you are a prominent member of the King's 
own set in the scandalous Court of the succeeding monarch, 
James I. 

When Algernon Swinburne in his Essay on George 
Chapman speaks of Carr as " one whom we are accustomed 
only to regard as the unloveliest of the Ganymedes whose 

* These anagrams come from a book in the Grenville Library, entitled : 
" The Teares of the Isle of Wight shed on the Tombe of their most noble, 
valorous, and loving Captaine and Governour, Henrie, Earle of Southampton : " 
London, 1625, 4to. 



GANYMEDE 213 

Jupiter was James," we know very well what is meant 
by it, nor are we in any doubt when we read in the 
same essay that James I. was " a king who combined 
with the northern virulence and pedantry, which he 
may have derived from his tutor Buchanan, a savour 
of the worst qualities of the worst Italians of the 
worst period of Italian decadence." But when Nash 
speaks of young Southampton (his own Maecenas) as 
" Jove's eagle-borne Ganymede," he is, I think, only 
using a flattering classical allusion (flattering, because 
Ganymede was a very beautiful youth) in a perfectly 
respectful manner. 

It may well be the same with Bacon and Southampton 
in the intense language of the Sonnets. It may be quite 
harmless as between the intellectual and pushing Francis 
Bacon and his younger aristocratic friend the literary 
Earl, and I have a strong feeling that it was so throughout 
their close acquaintance ; but some incidents may have 
shown the natural bent of Bacon's passion even to the 
young Earl, and I cannot help feeling that the Sonnets 
refer more than once to a real scandal in the background. 
Moreover, such an occurrence or such reports of one, 
whether true or not, would help to explain in some degree 
Bacon's very tardy success in mounting the ladder of 
ambition. When we consider the high rank to which he 
was bom, and the persistent place-hunter he always was, 
it does seem to require some explanation why he should 
be allowed to pass the age of forty-six before anything 
like a real rise was given to him. But more light will be 
thrown on the Dark Lady and the Southampton-Bacon 
scandal when we come to Sonnets xl.-xlii. 

Sonnets xxxviii.-xxxix. 

These two seem to go together, and not to be con- 
nected with their immediate antecedent or consequent 
Sonnets. Possibly an odd leaf of the MS. containing 
these two Sonnets got moved from its proper place. They 
both belong to Southampton, and seem to belong to the 
period before any intrigue, depression, or scandal had 



214 THE SONNETS 

come about. He will praise his beloved friend in worthy 
verse, for his friend is as himself : 

"And what is't but mine own when I praise thee? 
Even for this let us divided live, 
And my dear love lose name of single one 
That by this separation I may give 
That due to thee which thou deserv'st alone." 

Now Bacon uses this very same idea of the first line 
in a letter to his cousin Cecil. " I write to myself in 
regard of my love to you, you being so near to me in 
heart's blood, as in blood by descent." * This idea of 
the personalities of two lovers being mutually inter- 
transfused was very common in the Italian sonnets of 
the period, and arose no doubt from the study of Plato, 
which made such great advances in Italy just before this 
generation. Shakespeare would not be likely to hear so 
much about it among his Stratford or theatrical friends, 
as would Francis Bacon among the court gallants. 

Perhaps the enigmatical four lines that follow mean 
that the name Bacon is to be lost as between them, but 
that thus separated he can and will give deserved praise 
to his beloved friend — but by another name or in another 
way. 

Sonnets xl.-xlii. 

These Sonnets are very important with regard to the 
relations between the author of the Sonnets, and the friend 
who robbed the poet of his mistress, and " heaved " the 
owner out of his " seat." I am afraid we have nothing to 
do here with any Dark Lady of the Court, any maid of 
honour, any lively, forward Mistress Mary Fitton, or 
indeed any " real lady " at all. All the incidents and 
allusions seem to point to a "common drab" of a very 
pronounced kind. 

Anyhow, the chronological order of the Sonnets, which 
none of the best critics ever venture to deny, exclude 
Mary Fitton here, for she was too young, and had not 
long been at Court ; and it is Southampton who is the 

* Abbott's Francis Bacon, p. 173. 



A "LOOSE-LEGGED LAIS" 215 

fascinating Adonis who carries the lady off from a former 
lover, with that " lascivious grace " which the poet and 
" unseated lover " was fain to forgive. But we know of 
no scandal between Mary Fitton and Southampton ; it 
was Pembroke some years later that brought her to grief. 
Moreover, the atmosphere of these Sonnets is hardly a 
court atmosphere. It seems much more like the atmos- 
phere that John Marston so skilfully puts into his canvas 
when he depicts in his Satyres the baser vices of society 
as then existing. 

It is well known that in Southampton's youth he was 
a licentious de'hauche of an extremely attractive person- 
ality. I often think that John Marston alluded to him and 
his drab in those Satyres that were burnt by the Arch- 
bishop's order in the Stationers' Hall. Who else could the 
following lines so well hit off ? Sat. II. 107 : 

'■ In faith yon is a well-faced gentleman ; 

See how he paces like a Cyprian ! 

Fair amber tresses of the fairest hair 

That ere were waved by our London air ; 

Rich laced suit, all spruce, all neat, in truth. 

Ho, Lynceus ! whats yonder brisk neat youth 

'Bout whom yon troop of gallants flocken so. 

And now together to Brown's common go ? 

Thou know'st I'm sure ; for thou cnnst cast thine eye 

Through nine mud walls, or else old poets lie : 

'Tis loose-legged Lais, that same common drab, 
For whom good Tubrio took the mortal stab." 

What if this " loose-legged Lais " should turn out to be the 
earlier Lady of the Sonnets after all ? She was a strumpet 
who wore men's breeches, as Marston signifies afterwards. 
Indeed, som*^ solution of this kind clears up many little 
difficulties with regard to the peculiar phraseology here 
and there to be noticed both in the Sonnets and the Plays. 
It helps to throw light on the Proteus of The Two Gentle- 
men of Verona, and the Protean Form in Sonnet liii., 
with its " substance " and " shadow," and yet more light 
on the ladies with doublet and hose [and codpiece], who 
make a decidedly unfitting appearance in some of the 
scenes of the Shakespeare Plays. Women did dress up 



2i6 THE SONNETS 

as men in those days, and got a reputation for doing so, 
not always of a very savoury character. There was Long 
Meg of Westminster, known to lovers of black-letter catch- 
pennies ; there was Moll Cutpurse, known on and off the 
stage by most scandal-mongers, a little later, but only a 
few years, than the date of these Sonnets. Indeed, Dr. 
Brinsley Nicholson suggested that the " loose-legged Lais " 
of Marston's satire was none other than Moll Cutpurse 
the hermaphroditic courtesan, and he took " good Tubrio " 
in the lines quoted above to be poor Kit Marlowe, who 
lost his life of intellectual promise all through some " lewd 
love " and bawdy quarrel. But Marlowe was stabbed in 
1593 and Moll Cutpurse was born about 1584, so if Moll 
was the cause of the fatal quarrel, she was indeed a pre- 
cocious young member of the profession, for she could 
not be much more than nine or ten years old, although 
she was doubtless over seven. But surely Dr. Nicholson's 
suggestion, though worthy of respect seeing from whom 
it comes, will never do ; it would out-gallop Mrs. Gallup, 
for while she only says that Bacon was Queen Elizabeth's 
son, and a very voluminous writer, the Doctor's sugges- 
tion would lead us to infer that Bacon took young Moll 
Cutpurse into keeping when she was about thirteen, she 
having been under Marlowe's protection some three or 
four years previously, and then, when certainly under 
fourteen, left Bacon and gave herself up to Bacon's 
Master-Mistress the fair-haired Southampton (fair Briscus). 
Whether the young lady wore frocks or breeches at this 
early age is doubtful ; but one would say breeches, from 
what the lynx-like eyes of Lynceus saw. 

But a truce to such suggestions ; " this way madness 
lies," and a kind of Italianated sexual perversion, of which 
in these days we can hardly credit the existence. But it 
was by no means rare in the days of Bacon and Southamp- 
ton, and in the neighbourhood of the theatres and the 
gardens, which so easily brought vicious people together. 
One has only to read Marston, Hall, and the others who 
satirise and deplore the vices of the age, to come to a very 
sad conclusion as to the real amount of vice in Elizabethan 



PROTEUS AND ADONIS 217 

London.* We must remember these satirists are not un- 
worthy of credit ; they are educated University men for 
the most part, and some, such as Hall, afterwards Bishop 
of Exeter, and a good Bishop too, were eminent for their 
private virtues. 

But not much that is clear can be gained by dwelling 
on each Sonnet as it comes in order. There is too little 
to fasten on with any degree of certainty. There seems 
an allusion to a journey the poet took to some place in 
Sonnets xlviii.-ll, and we know that in July 1594 Bacon 
took a long journey to the North, and was stopped at 
Huntingdon by a painful illness, and came back and rested 
at Cambridge and took his M.A. This may be the journey 
referred to here, as it is in Sonnets xxvii. and xxviii. 
Anyhow, we know of no journey of Shakespeare for 
certain, as we know Bacon's journey. Sonnets lii.-lv. 
may be apportioned to Southampton, and dated before 
1598 rather than after. We have in Liil. the Proteus of the 
Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Adonis, and the hues or 
" hews " and " shadows " of beauty which lent such 
charm to Southampton's youthful face in the writer's 
eyes. And, as I have said elsewhere, it is not improbable 
that Meres saw Sonnet lv. in MS. before 1598 and moulded 
his Latin praises on it, as that the reverse should 
have happened, as the ordinary theory maintains, and 
the Sonnet be thus made later than Meres' book. 
Sonnets lvii. and lviii. have been already referred 
to in connection with Pembroke's letter to Cecil, which 
was meant for the Queen's eye, and possibly written by 
Bacon, and was in any case suspiciously like these Sonnets 
in its wording. After these Sonnets we have a long 
sequence (lix.-lxxiv.) dealing in a depressed tone of 
pessimistic philosophy with the ravages of Time, and with 
a world made all awry (lxvi.), and culminating in a hint 
of possible suicide or assassination (lxxiv,). Now all this 
is, I maintain, decidedly Baconian, and not Shakespearian. 

* In fact, Marston puts the case very tersely thus : 

" Ganymede is up and Hebe down." 

— Scourge of J'iilaiuie, line 49. 



2i8 THE SONNETS 

In Nov. 1599 Bacon writes to the Queen, " My life hath 
been threatened, and my name hbelled." He also writes 
about the same time to Cecil, " As for any violence to be 
offered to me, wherewith my friends tell me to no small 
terror that I am threatened, I thank God I have the privy 
coat of a good conscience." He also writes thus to Lord 
Henry Howard, " For my part I have deserved better than 
to have my name objected to envy, or my life to a ruffian's 
violence." 

I will only consider in detail four lines of this section : 

Sonnet lix. 
" If there be nothing new, but that which is, 
Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled, 
Which labouring for invention, bear amiss 
The second burthen of a former child ! " 

Here, I contend, we have several ideas and phrases 
which point distinctly to the philosopher Francis Bacon, 
and are very remote from Shakespeare. 

The first two lines remind us of Bruno's philosophy, 
which had become somewhat the fashion with the cultured 
aristocrats and the Sidney set since Bruno's visit to 
England in Elizabethan days. This is not by any means 
the only allusion to this somewhat mystical and prophetic 
philosophy in these Sonnets, for in three later ones, cvi., 
cvii., and cxxiii., we have similar ideas put into the verse. 

Bacon would be no stranger to this intellectual atmos- 
phere, and could breathe freely in it. I doubt very much 
whether Shakespeare could. Then there is that word 
" invention," which Bacon had almost made his own ; 
he was always " labouring for invention," from his youth 
upwards. And then consider that fourth line ; it was a 
" Birth "—the " Greatest Birth of Time "—with which 
he, so confident in his own powers even at an early age, 
proposed to enlighten the world and to show forth a con- 
queror over the Domain of Nature, and afterwards he 
returned to the subject in his Masculus Partus Temporis, 
the first germs of his Magna Instauratio. By his " Male 
Birth of Time" he means something "generative" or "fruit- 
ful," as opposed to the barren philosophy of Aristotle, 



BACON AND BRUNO 219 

This evidence, though only indirect and inferential, 
seems to me strong. 

The possible connection between Bacon and Bruno 
must not be despised. Bruno was in London from 1583 
to 1585, living with the French ambassador, and Sir 
Philip Sidney, Fulke Greville, Lord Burghley, and other 
members of the cultivated aristocracy connected with the 
court circle, knew Bruno well. Bruno was a very little 
time in London before he went to Oxford to maintain his 
Copernican theories against the conservative dons of that 
august University. The occasion was a function of honour 
to Albert Alasco, Count Palatine of Poland ; and Lord 
Leicester, who was Chancellor of the University, went 
down from London with Alasco and a company of court 
notables {nobilium cohors) to do the honours. How likely 
that Bacon should be one — how next to impossible that 
Shakespeare should be there. Bruno's friends in England 
were also Bacon's friends. Hardly a man could be named 
more likely to be conversant with Bruno's works than 
Bacon, or less likely than Shakespeare, who did not leave 
Stratford till Bruno had left England. Yet Bruno's 
peculiar philosophical ideas are deeply imbedded in the 
Shakespeare Plays and Sonnets. Nor are we without a 
sort of corroborative evidence which, considering the little 
we really know of Bacon between 1580 and 1592, is worth 
recording here. Mr. Nicholas Faunt writes to Anthony 
Bacon, 6th May 1583, just about a month before the 
Bruno court function at Oxford, and tells him that his 
brother Francis now was " sometimes a courtier." This 
is in our favour, for Bacon, who took all knowledge to be 
his province, would clearly like to travel down with a 
fashionable court company to Oxford to hear Bruno if 
he could bring it about. 

The next section is 

Sonnets lxxv.-lxxxvii. 

Here the poet makes excuses for his verse being so 
*' barren of new pride (lxxvi.) and tongue-tied " (lxxxv.). 
He complains that his "sick Muse doth give another place," 



220 THE SONNETS 

and there are several allusions to a rival poet (one or more). 
To this vexed question of the rival poets, I can add but 
little to help the solution, nor does it affect the Bacon- 
Shakespeare controversy to any great degree. 

Marlowe has had an ingenious defender, but his erratic 
course was ended in 1593, and this date being before 
Lucrece was published seems to exclude him from any 
rivalry ; but Chapman and Samuel Daniel have each had 
very expert defenders as well, and perhaps we may say 
of them that " honours are easy " in the earlier Sonnets, 
but Chapman gains points towards the finish, and wins 
the rubber on Sonnet lxxxvi. The date involved is the 
main and only point connected with the Baconian theory, 
and it comes out 1598 or 1599, a very suitable date as 
will appear. 

Sonnet lxxviii. begins thus : 

" So oft have 1 invoked thee for my Muse, 
And found such fair assistance in my verse, 
As every alien pen hath got my use, 
And under thee their poetry disperse." 

" Alien " is one of the few words put in italics in the 
original, and some allusion seems intended. I suggest that 
alien points to Alley n, the actor-manager and partner 
with Henslowe, who had the Rose Theatre from 1592. 
Thus some poets or poet-dramatists connected with 
Alle3m's theatre are most likely meant. Chapman would 
suit, and Samuel Daniel as well. But in Sonnet lxxxvi. 
we get a rather strong proof that Chapman is alluded to 
there at any rate, and we get the date 1598-9, which agrees 
very well with the date we inferred from the parallel 
Sonnet xxxii., which recalled Marston's Pygmalion' si mage. 
It would take too long to give the whole proof and the 
parallel passages which Professor Minto and Mr. Tyler 
have ingeniously worked out, but they show that this 
Sonnet refers to Chapman's Iliad in fourteen-syllable 
verse (1598) — " the proud full sail of his great verse " — 
and also to Chapman's Shadow of Night (1594). The poet 
says of these two of Chapman's attempts, " I was not 
sick of any fear from thence " ; that is, he was not put 



OVID'S BANQUET OF SENSE 221 

to " silence " by either the Iliad- 01 the Shadow of Night, 
and then gives the real reason : 

" But when your countenance fil'd up his line, 
Then lack'd I matter ; that enfeebled mine." 

Neither Minto nor Tyler has tried to explain this reference 
to Southampton's " countenance," nor is it known that 
the Earl gave Chapman any special mark of favour about 
this time. 

But I have a suggestion to make, which would be in 
keeping with the rest of the explanation of the Sonnet. 
I think these last two lines of the Sonnet refer to Chapman's 
other fine poem of 1595, entitled Ovid's Banquet of Sense. 
This most sensuous love-poem was undoubtedly of the 
same class as Venus and Adonis, and it was a dangerous 
rival in its passionate raptures and glowing description of 
voluptuous male and female beauty. It took away for 
itself the very " matter " of verse that the poet wanted 
to give a second immortal picture of Southampton, as he 
had more than half promised his patron. Adonis was the 
" counterfeit " of Southampton, and when a second 
counterfeit of Southampton's manly beauty appeared in 
finer and fuller form in Chapman's Banquet of Sense, then 
our poet felt he had indeed a rival who had taken the very 
ground from under him : 

"But when your countenance fil'd* up his line. 
Then lack'd I matter ; that enfeebled mine." 

The fact is that Chapman in Ovid's Banquet of Sense 
had practically expanded a portion of Venus and Adonis 
dealing with the five senses (lines 433-450), in the middle 
of which portion appears the line : 

" But O, what banquet wert thou to the taste ;" 

which would suit very well as one of the lines which the 
rival poet filled up, for Ovid's Banquet is mainly a discourse 
to Corinna (Julia) of the five senses, which are all men- 
tioned in the passage of Venus and Adonis. 

An ingenious writer in Blackwood's Magazine for June 

* FiTd (orig. t(\.)= filled. Lack'd in next line shows this. 



/ll 



222 THE SONNETS 

1901 has given several reasons for supposing Daniel to be 
the rival poet. There are clearly more rival poets than 
one according to the explicit statement of the Sonnets 
themselves. Daniel is most likely one of them, as I have 
already suggested. This section also contains a line which 
is a difficult one for Shakespearians, but suits the Bacon 
theory well. 

" I grant thou wert not married to my Muse," 

is the first line of Sonnet lxxxii. But what force or 
meaning can this have coming from Shakespeare ? 
Southampton and Shakespeare's Muse were married 
poetically as far as the name of the Earl in the dedication 
and the signature of the poet in full at the foot of it could 
celebrate the fact. The banns were fully published, and 
no one at that time seems to have thought of forbidding 
them for any fault or error of name. But the case was 
very different with Southampton and Bacon's Muse. 
There was no poetical marriage here, nor were any banns 
published here, or even the two names coupled together 
in any way in the Temple of the Muses. So Bacon could 
truly say his Muse was not married, whereas Shakespeare 
could not sa}^ this. 

As to the last Sonnet of this section (lxxxvii.), be- 
ginning : 

" Farewell I thou art too dear for my possessing," 

it is so thoroughly permeated with abstruse legal allusions, 
that unless the reader is well acquainted with what is 
known to lawyers as the " doctrine of uses " and that 
smaller branch of the subject dealing with " failure of 
consideration " he will be sure to miss the best points 
of the Sonnet. But who except the shining hghts of the 
Inns of Court troubled about such matters, or, indeed, 
ever referred to them ? Surely not the Stratford player. 
What omnivorous general reader knows anything about 
such matters even now ? The inference seems inevit- 
able and insuperable, but the orthodox look at it and — 
pass on. 



WAS SHAKESPEARE LAME? 223 

Sonnets lxxxviii.-cv. 

These nineteen Sonnets seem to refer to Southampton 
as beginning to lead a gay hfe at Court, and as also getting 
entangled in general scandal as a libertine. The date 
may be 1505-6, and in part of this period, as we know, 
Southampton was away from England with Essex. 
Sonnets xcvii. and xcviii. fit in very well with this 
absence and separation from Bacon. 

As the " lameness," which the author of the Sonnets 
admits as an affliction of his, is mentioned in this sec- 
tion (Sonnet lxxxix.) as well as elsewhere (xxxvii.), 
it will not be amiss to consider it more closely. What- 
ever it was, the defect was with him, as with Byron, 
a subject about which he had unpleasant feelings of 
shame. 

Capell and other Shakespearians have conjectured 
that Shakespeare was literally lame, while others have 
thought of the lameness only in connection with Shake- 
speare's morals. Mr. Swinburne, in his Report of the Pro- 
ceedings, &c., of the Newest Shakespeare Society (April i, 
1876), introduces Mr. D. reading a paper on " The Lame- 
ness of Shakespeare — was it moral or physical ? " Mr. D. 
assumed at once that the infirmity was physical. " Then 
arose the question — In which leg ? " and then the dis- 
cussion proceeded in far more earnest, courteous, and 
serious fashion than is ever granted or allowed or practised 
when dealing with Baconian heretics. 

As Mr. Algernon C. Swinburne, besides being a most 
distinguished poet and man of letters, is also a high 
Shakespearian authority, I will give his report in full of 
Mr. D.'s paper. It was first printed in the Examiner of 
April I, 1876, and never having been reprmted as far 
as I know, I think it will interest my readers. It 
must be remembered that Mr. Swinburne only professed 
to act as the secretary or reporter of the Society, and 
therefore cannot be held responsible for Mr. D.'s views, 
but I do not think he would have published them, unless 
he thought some good Shakespearian object would be 



224 THE SONNETS 

obtained by their publication. I therefore reproduce 
them : 

" Mr. D. then brought forward a subject of singular interest 
and importance — ' The lameness of Shakespeare : was it moral 
or physical ? ' He would not insult their intelligence by dwell- 
ing on the absurd and exploded hypothesis that this expression 
was allegorical, but would at once assume that the infirmity in 
question was physical. Then arose the question, 'In which 
leg?' He was prepared, on the evidence of an early play, to 
prove to demonstration that the injured and interesting limb was 
the left. ' This shoe is my father,' says Launce in the Two 
Gentlemen of Verona ; ' no, this left shoe is my father ; — no, no, 
this left shoe is my mother ; — nay, that cannot be so neither : — 
yes, it is so, it is so; it hath the worser sole.'' This passage was 
not necessary either to the progress of the play, or to the 
development of the character ; he believed he was justified in 
asserting that it was not borrowed from the original novel on 
which the play was founded ; the inference was obvious, that 
without some personal allusion it must have been as unintelligible 
to the audience, as it had hitherto been to the commentators. 

" His conjecture was confirmed, and the whole subject 
illustrated with a new light by that well-known line in the Sonnets, 
in which the poet describes himself as ' made lame by Fortune's 
dearest spite,' a line of which the inner meaning and personal 
application had also by a remarkable chance been reserved for 
him (Mr. D.) to discover. There could be no doubt that we 
had here a clue to the origin of the physical infirmity referred 
to : an accident which must have befallen Shakespeare in early 
life while acting at the Fortune Theatre, and consequently before 
his connection with a rival company — a fact of grave importance 
till now unverified. The epithet 'dearest,' like so much else 
in the Sonnets, was evidently susceptible of a double interpreta- 
tion. The first and most natural explanation of the term would 
at once suggest itself; the playhouse would of necessity be 
dearest to the actor dependent on it for subsistence, as the means 
of getting his bread ; but he thought it not unreasonable to infer 
from this unmistakable allusion, that the entrance fee charged 
at the Fortune may probably have been higher than the price of 
seats in any other house. Whether or not this fact, taken in 
conjunction with the accident already mentioned, should be 
assumed as the immediate cause of Shakespeare's subsequent 



THE MORTAL MOON 225 

change of service, he was not prepared to pronounce with such 
positive confidence as they might reasonably expect from a 
member of the Society ; but he would take upon himself to 
affirm that his main thesis was now and for ever established on 
the most irrefragable evidence, and that no assailant could by 
any possibility dislodge by so much as a hair's-breadth the least 
fragment of a single brick in the impregnable structure of proof 
raised by the argument to which they had just listened. 

" There was much further discussion, and a paper by Mr. G. 
on the quarrel between Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, which 
unfortunately had to be postponed." 

CIV. is an important Sonnet, for it supplies a chrono- 
logical allusion, and these are scanty enough in the Sonnets. 
Three years have passed since " first your eye I ey'd," it 
says. Now this peculiar phrase about the eyes recalls the 
early Procreation Sonnets, i. and xvii., in both of which 
the youth's eyes are specially marked for admiration, 
and such very early Sonnets could not refer to Pembroke, 
as we showed. This Sonnet civ. also speaks of the friend's 
" sweet hue," and " hue " is a Southampton word exclu- 
sively, so we get the date about 1595. 

Sonnet cvii. is also a crucial Sonnet as to date. The 
two important lines are : 

" The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured, 
And the sad augurs mock their own presage." 

From these words some critics date the Sonnet before 
the Queen's death (1601), and others after the Queen's 
death (1603). It is pretty certain that the mortal moon 
stands for Queen Elizabeth ; no title was more popular 
for her with the poets. But what does " hath her eclipse 
endured " mean ? Is it her death that is referred to, or 
has she endured and passed through an eclipse — a time 
of dark danger — with Essex, and is now shining brightly 
again ? On first reading Death seems meant, but a con- 
sideration of contemporary parallel passages points clearly 
away from Death and fixes the Sonnet at about 1601, the 
date of Southampton's imprisonment, apparently hinted 
at in the " sad augurs " whose presage about his success 
and Essex was so miserably wrong. The author of 



226 THE SONNETS 

Henry V. would be a " sad augur " now in 1601. But 
for the Queen to endure an eclipse need not mean her 
death. Bacon himself shall prove this beyond contro- 
versy. In his History of Henry VII. he says : " The 
Queen hath endured a strange eclipse." He also writes 
in 1594 to Lord Keeper Pickering : " If this eclipse of 
her (Majesty's) favour were past." * About the year 
1599 Bacon writes to the Queen : " I beseech our blessed 
Saviour . . . that I may never live to see any eclipse of 
your glory, interruption of safety, or indisposition of your 
person." f 

The first two lines of this same Sonnet cvii. refer to 
Bruno's Philosophy, which the author-poet had read in 
the Italian, All these things point to Bacon, cviii. is 
connected with the preceding cvii. and with Southampton's 
imprisonment, and seems to be of the same tenor as 
Bacon's letter to Southampton after his imprisonment 
already quoted. 

The line 

"When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent" 

of CVII. suits 1601 better than 1603 for date. But an 
earlier eclipse, the attempted murder of Queen Elizabeth 
in 1594, may be the one. 

Sonnets cix.-cxxv. 

There has been a period of absence between South- 
ampton and the poet, and the latter admits sins of omission 
and of commission during this time ; but still there is 
nothing in all the world so dear to the poet's heart as 
his " Rose " : 

" For nothing this wide universe I call, 
Save thou, my Rose ; in it thou art my all." 

There is no very clear reference to date in this sequence, 
but it seems to have been written after Southampton had 
returned from his Irish expedition with Essex (1599). 
This may have been the absence referred to, and while 

* Abbott's Bacon, p. 37. 
t Spedding's Bacon, ix. 160. 



A THREEFOLD CHARGE 227 

the Earl was away, certain indiscretions, which are vaguely 
hinted at, seem to have occurred. The poet confesses 
them with sorrow. Whatever they were they caused 
much " vulgar scandal," and they brought odium on the 
poet, for his name received " a brand," seemingly a 
" pubhc " brand. He admits he had made himself " a 
motley to the view," and " gored his own thoughts " and 
" look'd on truth askance." All which seems to mean 
that he had acted more like a fool than a wise or sane 
man, had wounded his self-respect, and paid very slight 
heed to truth or virtue when they turned their admonish- 
ing eyes upon him. 

If we read carefully the first four Sonnets of this 
sequence, and then read cxix. and cxxi., we cannot fail 
to see a threefold charge admittedly hanging over the 
poet's head — a public odium, a vulgar private scandal, 
and a " madding fever " for an unworthy syren. I con- 
tend, taking into consideration the evidence about Bacon, 
already adduced, that all these three charges fit in with 
his life and character much better than with Shakespeare's. 
For Bacon incurred much public odium for taking a part 
in the Government prosecution of his closest friend Essex. 
This " public manner " of proceeding against Essex was 
imposed upon Bacon by " pubhc means," i.e. his public 
position as a " learned counsel," and he hints that his 
nature was " subdued " to it not willingly, but of public 
necessity. This is his excuse in Sonnet cxi., and he lays 
the blame on "" the guilty goddess Fortune." But the 
public opinion was strongly against Bacon, for Essex 
was most popular, and to be committed to custody almost 
directly he returned from Ireland raised pity far and 
wide, and, to use Bacon's own words, " Pity in the common 
people, if it run in a strong stream, doth ever cast up 
scandal and envy." * The people and the friends of 
Essex suspected an enemy at court, and as Bacon had 
been several times admitted to the Queen's presence, 
envy and odium fell strongly on him. 

Bacon excuses himself to Southampton for his " harm- 

* History of He^iry VI I. , Works, vi. p. 203. 



228 THE SONNETS 

ful deeds " (they were " harmful " to Southampton, and 
we know Bacon begged hard to be excused acting against 
his former friends) by reminding him that Fortune had 
obHged him to take up " pubHc duties " and " pubHc 
manners " (and not over-scrupulous were these last), to 
earn his living as an unprovided-for younger son. I know 
well that this particular Sonnet has been thought to be 
the best proof there is that the author of the Sonnets 
was an actor, and therefore Shakespeare,* but the " harm- 
ful deeds " of the second line of the Sonnet seem to 
exclude this interpretation. 

The " vulgar scandal " has been sufficiently examined 
elsewhere. Enough here to say that it is Baconian and 
not Shakespearian, cxxi. deserves careful attention. 
The love fever seems to point to Mary Fitton : 

" How have mine eyes out of their spheres httn fitted, t 
In the distraction of this madding fever ! " 

—Son?7et CXIX. 

and the " Syren tears " are Baconian, as we see by what 
is said in Bacon's Essay " Of Love " (1612) : " [Love] 

* Mr. Tyler says (p. 270) : "The allusions in this Sonnet cxi. to Shake- 
speare's profession as an actor are not to be doubted." What Mr. Massey 
says on this same Sonnet is well worth perusal, both on account of the con- 
vincing force of his remarks, and because it shows us how the most ingenious 
and expert Shakespearians, arguing from an unsound hypothesis, are con- 
stantly wounding and shooting their own side. Mr. Massey proves at great 
length that this Sonnet cxi. has nothing to do with Shakespeare and the 
stage, and completely demolishes Mr. Tyler's assertions and allusions. Mr. 
Massey shows that no one has " ever heard of any ' harmful deeds ' or doings 
of Shakespeare, occasioned in consequence of his connection with the stage. 
Nor do we see how his name could be branded or ' receive a brand ' from 
his connection with the theatre. What name ? He had no name apart from 
the theatre and the friendships it had brought him. His name was created 
there. His living depended on the theatre ; he met and made his friends at 
the theatre ; he was making his fortune by the theatre ; how then should he 
exclaim against the theatre ? And then the meaning and application of 
'public manners' and 'public means' is considered through several pages, 
with the result that Shakespeare and the actor's life is not referred to here 
at all" (,pp. 189-195, private edit. 1888). Mr. Massey was a well-known and 
staunch Shakespearian, and laughed Bacon to scorn, but he rightly excluded 
Shakespeare here. 

t This word fitted is, I think, rather an important piece of evidence in a 
matter where direct evidence is very scanty — I mean the matter of the Dark 



BACON'S PYRAMID THEORY 229 

doeth much mischief ; sometimes Hke a Siren, sometimes 
like a Fury.'' Cf. also De Sap. Vet., xxxi. 

Sonnet cxxiii. 
This Sonnet and some others are supposed to show 
traces of Bruno's philosophy, and Brandes, the great 
Danish critic on Shakespeare, inclines to the view that 
the author of the Shakespeare Plays and Poems was well 
acquainted with Bruno's curious opinions. {Cf. Brandes, 
ii. 14, &c.) 

" No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change : 
Thy pyramids built up with newer might 
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange ; 
They are but dressings of a former sight." 

In this Sonnet, besides Bruno, we have the curious 
Baconian doctrine of the pyramidal form of science touched 
upon. Bacon, in his philosophical works, frequently 
advances the theory that knowledge was best represented 
in the form of a pyramid gradually tapering up to the 
transcendental from the broad bases of Natural Experi- 
ment. {Cf. Prof. Nichol's Bacon, ii. 231.) 

As for Bacon and Bruno, we may record that in June 
1583 there were grand doings at Oxford in honour of a 
" comte palatin de Pologne." Bruno was there and 
played an important part, for he sustained an argument 
against the most famous doctors of the University, de- 
fending the system of Copernicus against the older views. 
Was Bacon there ? Not unlikely, for he was fond of 
hearing and seeing these Italian freethinkers, and when 
later on another famous and unfortunate Italian, Vanini, 
came to London and played at turning Protestant, we 
hear that Francis Bacon was the most noticeable man 

Lady's personality. The use of the word fitted here is unique, and it has a 
place all to itself in the New Eng. Diet. : 

" Fit V- obs. rare^ trans. To force by fits or paroxysms oid of (the usual 
place) ; c. 1600. Shaks. Sonn. cxix." 

No other instance is known. So the word was probably invented by the 
poet for the sake of the verbal allusion or pun on Mistress Fitton's name. 
All this is quite in Bacon's manner. His enormous vocabulary is due a great 
deal to his own invented words, and we know he could seldom avoid a jest 
or quip if the opportunity presented itself. 



230 THE SONNETS 

among the large audience that assisted at the usual 
function held at such conversions. This was ist July 
1612. And in 1625, just before his death, Bacon writes 
to P. Fulgentius and tells him that he remembers writing 
a daring book called Temporis Partus Maximus quite forty 
years before. This would carry us to the exact date of 
Bruno's works, published (1583-1585) in London, which 
very probably had stirred up Bacon's thoughts to such 
metaphysical matters. 

Where was Shakespeare in 1583-5 ? Ah ! what a 
different entourage ! What time or inclination or know- 
ledge of Italian would he have just then to deal with the 
high question of " the prophetic and soul of the world," 
other mystical matters of Giordano Bruno ? He had a 
wife who had just presented him with twins, and he had 
his bread to earn. But some one clearly thought about 
such things (c/. Sonnets lix., cvi., cvii., and Richard III., 
Act II. sc. iii. lines 41-44). 

We read that " on the night of Ash- Wednesday 
1584, Bruno was invited by Fulke Greville to meet 
Sydney and others to hear his reason for his belief 
that the earth moves." Bacon knew Fulke Greville, 
and there are letters still extant between them, so 
Bacon might well be included in the others who were 
asked to meet Bruno. 

Sonnet cxxiv. 

This Sonnet is much too courtier-like and statesman- 
like for Shakespeare ; it is thoroughly Baconian. Bacon 
here states that his love for Southampton was a personal 
love and quite apart from political or " state " considera- 
tions, and therefore it stood independent of the reverses 
of fortune (lines 1-8), or the choice {aipecn<i) of court 
favourites (line 9). Hereticke is in italics in the original, 
and therefore we must take the Greek signification, 
" seeking or choosing for itself." There is also allusion 
to the discontent existing after the death of Essex among 
men of rank (" our fashion "), which shows the author 
to be a man of quality, thus excluding Shakespeare, and 



THE "CANOPY" SONNET 231 

suggesting Bacon and the date 1601, which fits in with 
the rest of the sequence. 

Sonnet cxxv. 

This is the " Canopy Sonnet," which has taxed the in- 
genuity of many interpreters, and dates have been given to 
it varying from 1588 — the Armada year, when Ehzabeth 
went to St. Paul's in state — to 1603-4, when King James I. 
made his progress through London under a canopy. 

I suggest that the date was June 16, 1600, when the 
Queen came to Blackfriars by water to grace by her 
presence the wedding of Mistress Anne Russell, one of 
her maids of honour and also a cousin of Francis Bacon. 
It was a great function ; Mistress Mary Fitton was there, 
and took the prominent part in the masque. William 
Herbert and Lord Cobham conducted the bride to church, 
and the Queen was carried from the water-side in a lectica 
borne by six knights. I suggest, as highly probable, that 
Bacon was one, for although not yet a knight, he was 
cousin of the bride, and on most intimate terms with the 
young noblemen who were present, and therefore may 
have been privileged to help in bearing the canopy and 
escorting the Queen. * 

* It is quite possible that the expression "bore the canopy" is a purely 
figurative one; just as the next expression, "laid great bases for eternity," 
clearly is so. In that case the references would be to the two poems dedicated 
to Southampton — Lucrece, and Venus and Adonis, And other parts of this 
Sonnet would agree very well with this view ; he now asks Southampton for 
something closer and more hearty than formal outward praise in dedications : 

" No; — let me be obsequious in thy heart, 
And take thou my oblation, poor but free, 
Which is not mixed with seconds, knows no art. 
But mutual render only me for thee." 

On this view we could better explain the curious phrase "not mixed with 
seconds" in a very Baconian manner ; it would be a jesting pun referring to 
his "second" name William Shakespeare being mixed up with the oblation 
which he had made in Lucrece and had signed " Your Lordship's in all duety " 
( = duity = duo). I am rather inclined to prefer this explanation to my sugges- 
tion of the historical wedding canopy ; for the author of the Sonnets is most 
studious not to let drop any plain hint by which his identity could be proved, 
and if a real event in his life is referred to by the words, " I bore the canopy," 
the writer is almost uplifting the mask, which he has been carefully and per- 
sistently keeping on throughout both series of the Sonnets. 



232 THE SONNETS 

As to the informer of the last line but one, there is 
some hidden allusion, for the word is one of the few placed 
in italics in the original. I think the poet is here apostro- 
phising Sir William Knollys, the Comptroller of the House- 
hold, who had done him some bad turn, perhaps connected 
with Mary Fitton. The italicised informer would be very 
applicable to him, for in the Essex trial he appeared in 
that rather odious position. Some remark of Cecil's had 
been mentioned in the course of the trial by both South- 
ampton and Essex ; and they were asked who had in- 
formed them of this saying of Cecil's. They did not 
wish to say at first, but at last it was reluctantly admitted 
by Southampton that Sir William Knollys was the 
authority for it, that he was the Informer. There is an- 
other word too in the Sonnet that points to this same 
court official quite in Bacon's manner — it is the word 
" control " : 

"Hence, thou suborn'd informer/ a true soul 
When most impeach'd stands least in thy control." 

Now Sir William was the Comptroller of the Household, 
with special care of Mistress Fitton and the bevy of maids 
of honour. 

H Francis Bacon had an intrigue of any kind with 
Mary Fitton, the Comptroller would be the most likely 
man to impeach one or both — for he was very partial to 
Mary himself, and would have married her if his old 
wife had not been in the way. He, too, was one of the 
three Wills of a future Sonnet, cxxxv., and as the " Dark 
Lady " had 

" Robb'd others' beds' revenues of their rents." 

— Sonnet CXLII. 

very likely the all-receptive Mary had taken the rent or 
" benevolence due " to the elderly wife of her " Comp- 
troller " Will. But that is another story. 

As to that word informer, we must not forget that 
jealousy is called " this sour informer " in Venus and 
Adonis. Perhaps the author wished to remind the Earl 
of Southampton of that passage as well. 



"MY OBLATION" 233 

This Sonnet also contains in line 10 a request which 
we may certainly term Baconian : 

" And take thou my oblation, poor but free." 

" My oblation ! " Why, this is the very expression Bacon 
used when he presented his Advancement of Learning to 
King James in 1605, and he reckons the oblation of his 
book to the King amongst the " freewill offerings." 

Sonnet cxxvi. 

This Sonnet, addressed to " my lovely boy," is gene- 
rally supposed to be an Envoy to the preceding Sonnets, 
or, as some think, to the whole first series. 

I can make very little out of it. Audit and quietus 
(lines II, 12) seem legal and Baconian, but they might 
just as well be Stratford law and Shakespearian, for Strat- 
ford municipal accounts tell us that on Jan. 10, 1564, 

" Sic qiiieti sunt 
Johannes Taylor et Johannes Shakspeyr.^^ 

Here we have a decided break in the course of the 
Sonnets. A new series and a new history now begin. 
We hear no more of " my Rose " or " my lovely boy." 
Henry Wriothesley seems to disappear, and a certain 
Will, " a man right fair," plays a principal and unworthy 
part, in company with a " woman colour'd ill." To the 
latter the majority of the remaining Sonnets are addressed. 

But before we quite leave the first series, and the 
hero and youthful Adonis who figures there as " my 
Rose," let us consider some facts which may suggest a 
possible reason for such an unusual term of endearment 
for a male. 

In February 1592, Henslowe's new theatre, the "Rose," 
was opened on the Bankside for Lord Strange's Players, 
with whom Shakespeare acted, and only a short time 
before this same company had an important rise in public 
esteem by acting several times (six) before the Court, 
while during the years previous (1587-1591) the Queen's 
and the Admiral's were the only companies who performed 
at Court at all. This new favour continued in after years. 



234 THE SONNETS 

and Shakespeare's company henceforth had the pre- 
eminence in courtly favour. 

Fleay, the great authority on the actors and plays of 
that period, attributes this change to Lord Southampton's 
influence, who had recently entered at Gray's Inn. For 
although the Earl might seem too young at nineteen to 
have much personal influence in advancing or favouring 
any particular body of players, yet he could easily induce 
Sir Thomas Heneage to aid his projects ; for Sir Thomas 
was fond of the young Earl's widowed mother, and after- 
wards married her. He was officially connected with 
the direction of the theatres, and in him afterwards, in 
1594, Bacon found a firm ally when seeking office. In 
fact, Essex and Mr. Vice-Chamberlain (Heneage) did more 
for Bacon than any of his other friends. 

Here then we have Bacon, Southampton, Shakespeare's 
Company, and the Rose Theatre all brought closely 
together, and if Bacon and Southampton went to the 
Bankside as special patrons of the new house, and sat to- 
gether enjoying the hidden allusions of the plays — a verit- 
able Damon and Pythias of the newly opened Rose — may 
not that be one reason among others why the " lovely 
boy " of the Sonnets is so often called " my Rose " ? 

Again the question crops up, why is not Shakespeare 
ever mentioned or hinted at, if such niterest is shown to 
be taken in him and his fellow-actors by Bacon and 
Southampton ? Why this conspiracy of silence ? I 
think the somewhat parallel case of Sir Walter Scott 
throws light on this. The author of Waverley used to 
place poetical mottoes as headings to the chapters in his 
novels. He quoted from many different poets, but he 
never (with one exception) quoted from a poet named 
Walter Scott, who was often in men's mouths and much 
admired just then. This was remarked upon as suspicious 
at the time. But it was soon seen that Sir Walter did 
not wish to " repeat himself." Is that why Bacon never 
mentions Shakespeare ? Perhaps it is one reason — but 
there are more serious reasons in this case of implicated 
scandal and odium. 



SHAKESPEARE IGNORED 235 

But not only does Bacon never mention Shakespeare, 
but a great many other contemporaries never once men- 
tion him, even men who had written many voluminous 
works, such as Selden and Clarendon. Look, too, at the 
extraordinary case of Henslowe and AUeyn. If any men 
in the dramatic world were thoroughly acquainted with 
Shakespeare, and also knew his connection with South- 
ampton, and perhaps Bacon, it was these two managers 
of theatres, of the " Rose " for many years, and the 
" Fortune " as well. Yet Henslowe's Diary, which con- 
tains frequent mention of many actors and playwrights 
for a long course of years, never so much as mentions 
Shakespeare directly or indirectly. Ben Jonson, Dekker, 
Chettle, Munday, Drayton, Marston, and others appear 
frequently in the comic spelling of this successful manager, 
but his Diary does not make a single attempt to spell 
the very variable name of the Stratford player. Neither 
do the Alleyn papers, although they mention many 
contemporary dramatists. Commendatory verses were 
common enough in those days, but in Shakespeare's life- 
time he neither received dj\y in connection with his own 
books nor composed any for other people's books. 

The orthodox Shakespearians are always dwelling on 
the crushing weight of contemporary evidence, and suppose 
that alone to be an insuperable argument. It is really 
nothing of the kind. They put a false estimate upon it. 
There is reference certainly now and again to " sweet Mr. 
Shakespeare," " gentle Shakespeare," and the like ; and 
Venus and Adonis, and Tarquin and Lucrece, were favourite 
poems, and were connected with a name or pen-name of 
Shakespeare ; but seldom can we find anything clearly 
pointing out the Stratford actor, and again and again his 
famous contemporaries utterly ignore this surprising genius 
when there seems every reason to expect a notice of him. 

We now come to the second series : 

Sonnets cxxvii.-clii, 

A " Dark Lady " fills nearly all the canvas in the 
remarkable picture here put before us. She is such a 



236 THE SONNETS 

lady as no amorous sonneteer had ever ventured to depict 
before, and this is one reason for beheving in her personal 
existence, and for inferring that here certainly we have 
no glorified or spiritualised creation of a poet's brain. 
Her eyes are raven black, her hair is like unto black 
wires, there are no roses in her cheeks, and her com- 
plexion seems to be anything but a good one, and her 
breasts are by no means the rising hills of snow that 
inflame rather than cool the lover's passion — they are 
dun. The poet feels that he cannot say of her : 

" Vera incessu patuit Dea," 

and so he says, rather prosaically : 

" My mistress when she walks treads on the ground." 

And yet in spite of all her defects there is this passionate 
finish : 

" And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare 
As any she bely'd with false compare." 

It seems by Sonnet cxxviii. that the lady was a 
fascinating player on the virginals, and therefore we may 
infer she was of good birth and expensively educated. 
The poet asks her (line 14) to give him her " lips to kiss." 
Surely such aristocratic lips were not for Shakespeare! 
Then there is the well-known incident of the poet's dear 
male friend who so treacherously robbed the poet of this 
Dark Lady of his heart. 

Then we have two singular Sonnets playing on the 
word Will in a most intricate and puzzling fashion (cxxxv. 
and cxxxvi.). I have already given my reasons for 
supposing the three Wills are William Herbert, Sir William 
Knollys, and Will Kemp the clown and acrobatic dancer, 
and have quoted the court ballad which coupled Mary 
Fitton with the clown. This is the only evidence we 
have as against Kemp, it is true, and no one would 
have thought of him, if it had not been for the ballad. 
When first I saw the ballad I thought the " clowne " was 
Shakespeare, so called as a Warwickshire yokel ; but 
remembering that Kemp had dedicated his one famous 



SIR WILLIAM KNOLLYS 237 

book to a Fitton who was a maid of honour, and most 
likely Mary Fitton the excellent dancer, I then, on this 
corroborative evidence, took Kemp to be more likely 
than Shakespeare. 

Sir William Knollys is another new candidate for 
admission into the trio of Wills, but is not of my intro- 
ducing. His claim has sprung up from the old documents 
and letters in the muniment room at Arbury, the country 
house of the Newdegate family, into which family Mary 
Fitton's elder sister married. From his letters to Mary's 
married sister (Anne Newdegate) he plainly shows his 
love for Mary, and that he would have liked her to have 
made him a father. But unfortunately Sir William was 
encumbered with a wife considerably his senior ; how- 
ever, it is believed that he promised to marry her when 
his wife died, and thus they were betrothed in a way. 
But as the Sonnets show plainly, the Dark Lady would 
break bed-vows or any vows, and would think nothing 
of being " twice-forsworn." 

Queen Elizabeth's maids of honour seem to have been 
a rather noisy and frisky company of girls at bed-time, 
and Mary Fitton was presumably by no means the most 
sedate. She had also some curious experiences with the 
second Will. Sir Nicholas I'Estrange reports that when 
Sir William Knollys lodged at Court (which was his rightful 
position, being Comptroller of the Household) " some of 
the ladyes and Maydes of Honour used to frisk and hey 
about in the next room, to his extreme disquiete a nights, 
though he often warned them of it ; at last he getts in 
one night at their revells, stripps off his shirt, and so 
with a pair of spectacles on his nose and Aretine in his 
hand, comes marching in at a posterne door of his own 
chamber, reading very gravely, full upon the faces of 
them." He enjoyed his joke, " for he often faced them 
and often traverst the room in this posture above an 
hour." 

What must his wife have thought, if she heard of it ! 
And what must the girls have thought when they heard, 
many years after, that Sir William had become a sure 



238 THE SONNETS 

and onlie (?) begetter at the age of eighty-four.* Surely 
they could not but recall the gymnosophist who studied 
his " Aretine " and tried to send them all to bed in the 
earlier days of their love's young dream. 

There was evidently something out of the common in 
this scandal with the maid of honour, for Sir Robert Cecil, 
writing to Sir George Carew on Feb. 5, 1601, uses these 
rather suspicious words : " We have no news, but that 
there is a misfortune befallen Mistress Fitton, for she is 
proved with child, and the Earl of Pembroke being 
examined, confesseth a fact, but utterly renounceth all 
marriage." What was this fact, or perhaps fault, that 
may have induced him to renounce his serious responsi- 
bihty ? Was the " clowne," from whom Pembroke took 
her, brought into the matter, or did the Comptroller 
" impeach " Francis Bacon ? We cannot tell ; but the 
more we search into the unpleasant mystery of the three 
Wills, the less can we find any evidence implicating Will 
Shakespeare. Of course there remains, and always must 
remain, that enigmatic closing distich of Sonnet cxxxvi. : 

" Make but my name thy love, and love that still, 
And then thou lov'st me, — for my name is Will." 

Until it be definitely proved that the writer means 
by these lines that his name is Will Shakespeare, I cannot 

* For the remarkable Earl of Banbury paternity case see A^ai. Diet. Biog., 
s.v. "Banbury." When Edward was born, the father, William Knollys, 
first Earl of Banbury (the " Controller"), was eighty years old, and when the 
second son Nicholas was born, he was eighty-four ! 

The legal doctrine is " Pater est quern iruptice demonstrant" but the House 
of Lords has repeatedly refused to admit the legitimacy of the Countess of Ban- 
bury's sons, and so their descendants are without their titles to the present day. 

One is rather reminded of the grey-haired old gentleman who one morning 
at his club pointed out with glee to a friend the announcement in the Tunes, 
that his wife had again given him a son ; but was rather taken aback when 
his friend, in a voice of dismay, exclaimed "Good God, whom do you 
suspect?" Such a question might well have been addressed to the first 
Earl of Banbury. 

I am afraid, too, that the book this virile old gentleman held in his hand 
was even worse than the modern reader may suspect. Marston tells us that 
Italianated Englishmen used to bring home "Aretine's pictures " with them 
fi-om Venice (Satire II. 145); these would be the infamous "positions" of 
Giulio Komano, with verses by Aretin to accompany them. 



THE THREE WILLS 239 

accept the ordinary solution. There is so much word- 
play in the various uses of Will, that we must always be 
in some doubt as to what the writer of the Sonnets really 
means here. 

In consequence of this enigmatical pleasantry and 
constant punning reiteration on the word " Will," Mr. 
Sidney Lee, in the Fortnightly Review (1888), wants to 
brush aside all inferences concerning Will Herbert, Will 
Shakespeare, and Will Knollys. He tries to do so by 
heaping up instances of playful contemporary reference 
to Will in the sense of lust or wilful lechery, and adds 
in a note (p. 219) that " the italics in the Sonnets may 
be disregarded, they only confuse the interpretation" (!). 
I fancy the truth is, he feels that they confuse his inter- 
pretation. But his argument makes it pretty clear that the 
writer might have meant by "my name is WiW'' something 
very different from Will Shakespeare. The idea intended 
to be conveyed may well be something oft his kind : " Love 
the name Will, for that so well describes me and my pas- 
sionate desire for you, that I may claim the name myself — 
I am indeed Will personified in my wilful passion for you." 
Or again. Will or Willy was a common poetic name for 
a pastoral love-poet, and the author of Venus and Adonis 
was that par excellence. He might have been " Shepherd 
Will," just as another fine poet was " Shepherd Tony." 
Or again, but this seems more unlikely, Bacon, as the 
writer, might mean that to the world at large his name 
as author of the Shake-speare " sugred " Sonnets and the 
Shake-speare Plays was not Francis, but Will. 

At least, then, we may say that there are such suffi- 
ciently good alternative explanations, as to prevent the 
interpretation of Will Shakespeare as the name of the 
author being considered a certainty. 

Sonnet cxxxvii. 

This sonnet is an importaivE one, for it shows, by 
metaphors in no waj^s obscure, what the moral character 
of the " Dark Lady " really was. She was 

"The bay where all men ride." 



240 THE SONNETS 

If Mary Fitton, the young maid of hononr, is meant, this 
statement is certainly startHng. The Masques and Revels 
of the Court of our great Virgin Queen must have con- 
cealed a state of morality far worse than our historians 
ever gave it credit for. We know Lady Anne Bacon 
made great complaints of Essex, and perhaps other 
young gallants as well, being too free with her nieces the 
Russells and other maids of honour ; but Lady Anne was 
a rigid precisian, and may have therefore imagined more 
evil than really existed. But here we have the Dark 
Lady spoken of in terms only befitting the vilest and 
commonest " drab." In fact, a few lines farther on, this 
same lady is called " the wide world's common place." 
The distich is : 

" Why should my heart think that a several plot 
Which my heart knows the wide world's common place. 

This reference to a common and its enclosure into 
severals may be compared with what Bacon says in a 
letter to Essex in 1595 after he had received from the 
Earl a valuable present of land, probably in Twickenham 
Park : " I reckon myself," he writes, " as a common, 
and as much as is lawful to be enclosed of a common, so 
much your lordship shall be sure to have." 

In Love's Labour's Lost, Act II. sc. i., we have 
" My lips are no common though several they be." 

But this question of the Dark Lady and Mary Fitton is 
further discussed in the chapter on " Had Bacon a 
Mistress ? " 

I am sorry to say that the private records of the 
Newdegate family seem to show that the Elizabethan 
maid of honour belonged decidedlj'- to that unfortunate 
class of women who are described as " women with a 
past." We find this portion of her MS. pedigree : 

Capt. Lougher, = MARY FITTON = Capt Polwhele, 

\st husband. Maid of Honour, 2nd husband. 

had one bastard 

by Wm., E. of Pembroke, 

and two bastards by Sir 

Richard Leveson, Kt. 



A LADY'S RECORD 241 

This is bad enough as it stands, but what makes it 
still worse is that genealogists cannot agree as to whether 
Captain Lougher was her first husband or her second — 
she was a lady evidently very " mixed " in her matri- 
monial relations. And then there was Will Kemp the 
" clowne," who probably coached her for the intricate 
steps in the Court masque dances, and last (if she had a 
last) there was Sir William Knollys, the grave old gentle- 
man who walked up and down before the maids of honour 

in a kind of " undress " uniform with his A in his 

hand. With such a record, T dare not say that Mary 
Fitton can not be the lady hinted at in the present Sonnet. 

Sonnet cxxxviii. 
This is one of the two Sonnets printed piratically by 
Jaggard in 1599. It is important for our purpose, because 
here we have the author calling himself old at some 
period before 1599. We are here on terra firma, and 
taking the supposition that these Sonnets were only just 
written, we have the writer (if Shakespeare) speaking of 
himself as old in his thirty-fifth year and (if Bacon) in 
his thirty-eighth year. Neither age quite warrants the 
appellation old, but the Sonnet becomes much more 
suited to the assumption of Baconian authorship, because 
Bacon has spoken of his being aged while yet in his prime, 
and Shakespeare has said nothing to that effect. 

Sonnet cxliii. 
This Sonnet, with its simile of a " careful housewife " 
running after a bird, probably a chicken, while her own 
child keeps running after her, reminds one very much of 
Bacon's simile in his letter to Fulke Greville in 1595. He 
is complaining of the want of success that attends his 
pursuit of the Queen's favour. " For to be, as I told you, 
like a child following a bird, which when he is nearest 
flieth away and lighteth a little before, and then the child 
after it again, and so in infinitum, I am weary of it." * 

* This same Baconian simile occurs almost word for word in Shakespeare's 

Coriolanus (Act I. sc. iii. ): "I saw him run after a gilded butterfly; and 

when he caught it, he let it go again ; and after it again ; and over and over 

he comes and up again." 

f 5 Q 



242 THE SONNETS 

Our poet uses this simile for the Dark Lady's benefit, and 
tells her : 

" So run'st thou after that which flies from thee." 

This fugitive was William Herbert according to our theory 
of the Will Sonnets, and possibly at first this youthful 
courtier was rather shy of the Dark Lady as being too 
forward for his delicate and sensitive nature. 

I have quoted in full, elsewhere in this volume (p. 156), 
a sonnet written by this same William Herbert to some 
unknown tempter of the softer sex, who had tried to over- 
come his bashfulness by a very liberal display of her 
charms. That sonnet shows plainly that young Herbert 
could be very shy and reserved if he suspected any- 
thing wrong. What if the unknown tempter was Mary 
Fitton ? 

Though at first, then, it appears that the lady could 
not succeed either in catching her bird or in putting a 
little salt on his tail, yet afterwards, as we know, she 
was more successful, and got both herself and her loved 
one into great trouble through it. This appears in 
Sonnet xll, one of the few Sonnets that have got dis- 
placed ; we read there : 

" Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won ; 
Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed ; 
And when a woman woos, what woman's son 
Will sourly leave her till she have prevailed .'"' 

The word " sourly " here fits in well with the " sullen 
eyes " of Herbert's sonnet, and the same lady seems to 
be meant in both cases. C/. also Sonnet cxliv., line 8 : 

" Wooing his purity with her foul pride." 

This Sonnet cxliii. seems both by its position and 
contents to belong plainly enough to the Will Herbert 
series. But a German commentator will have it that 
the " feathered creature " was a hen, i.e. a Hen which, 
he says, is short for Henry, and that Henry, Earl of 
Southampton, is the man meant here, and he proposes 
an emendation for the last two lines of the Sonnet, which 



THESE GERMAN CRITICS! 243 

are at first sight rather against his theory. However, 
his emendation puts it all right, for instead of : 

" So will I pray that thou may'st have thy Will 
If thou turn back, and my loud crying still," 

he proposes : 

" So will I pray that thou may'st have thy Hen 
If thou turn back and my loud crying pen." 

His annotations are : " Hen, short for Henry, not so 
usual certainly as Harry or Hal, but not unknown. Cf. 
B. Webster, s.v. Henry, Muret, &c. For ' pen ' cf. 
Lucrece, 681 : 

" Hq pe7ts her piteous clamours on her head." 

What are we coming to ? These Germans seem bent 
upon beating us on our own ground, and in our own 
language too. I have heard that some of the members 
of the German Shakespeare Society know more about 
the Plays than any English critic, or any Baconian 
either. I doubt whether the famous Bentley in his most 
far-fetched emendation of our great blind poet ever 
surpassed the above. 

This next Sonnet, cxliv., gives us more hints than 
the majority of the Sonnets. We get a limit of date, for 
the Passionate Pilgrim, which contains it and cxxxviii., 
was published in 1599. Therefore this curious love 
history is probably shortly before that date, and that is 
rather too early for the Herbert-Fitton incident : again, 
line 12, 

" I guess one angel in another's hell," 

seems to show that the author was well acquainted with 
the unspeakable tale in Boccaccio, which was not, I 
believe, at that time translated into English, and is 
generallv a little oasis of French in our English versions 
still. 

And the last line, 

" Till my bad angel fire my good one out," 
points very plainly to a peculiar theory of the nature of 
fire which Bacon held. He supposed that fire extin- 



244 THE SONNETS 

guished fire. In his History of Henry VII. he describes 
how Perkin Warbeck at the siege of Exeter fired one of 
the gates. " But the citizens perceiving the danger 
blocked up the gate inside with faggots and other fuel, 
which they likewise set on fire, and so repulsed fire with 
fire." It is also referred to in his Promus. (Cf. Two 
Gentlemen of Verona, Act II. sc. iv., ad fin.) 

Throughout this second series addressed to the Dark 
Lady there are occasional hidden allusions to that 
" infection of nature " in the writer which we have had 
cause to notice elsewhere : thus our author speaks of his 

" Tender feeling to base touches prone ;" — (CXLI.) 
and again : 

" Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate, 
Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving ;" — (cxlh.) 

again : 

" O, though I love what others do abhor, 
With others thou should'st not abhor my state ; " — (CL.) 

again : 

" Love is too young to know what conscience is ; " * — (CLI.) 

again : 

" My soul doth tell my body that he may 
Triumph in love ; flesh stays no further reason, 
But rising at thy name, doth point out thee 
As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride, 
He is contented thy poor drudge to be, 
To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side. 

No want of conscience hold it that I call 

Her "love" for whose dear love I rise and fall."— (CLl.) 

This is the Sonnet which is more unworthy of Bacon, 
morally speaking, than any other in the whole collection. 
It must be construed I am afraid sejisu obscceno, and is so 
bad that many Shakespearians have thought the divine 
William could never have written such a Sonnet about 
himself, not even if he had only just left the house where 

* C/. "chevril conscience" in Ben Jonson's Poetaster, Act I. sc. i. : " It 
shall be in the power of thy chevril conscience to do right or wrong at thy 
pleasure, my pretty Alcibiades." I have elsewhere supposed this aimed at 
Bacon, or Cheverell the lawyer. 



A DOUBTFUL SONNET 245 

William the Conqueror showed he was before Richard III. 
They say he wrote it for some one else, or they say that 
the indiscreet and lascivious Herbert wrote it, and that 
it got mixed up with Shakespeare's other Sonnets, and so 
was delivered to Thomas Thorpe, the printer, by Mr, 
W. H. the " only begetter." They will not have it that 
their supreme Swan of Avon should thus foul his own nest. 
"Is it not most damnable in us," says one of his own 
characters, " to be trumpeters of our unlawful intents ? " 
Is it to be credited, they ask, that Shakespeare would not 
feel and act up to the level of that thought in such a 
matter of personal import as this ? " The purest treasure 
mortal times afford is spotless reputation," says Mowbray. 
" Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, is the 
immediate jewel of their souls," says lago. " I have 
offended reputation," exclaims Antony, " a most un- 
noble swerving." * They cannot think it possible that a 
man who cared so little about gathering up his best works 
would have been party to the careful treasuring up of 
his worst — especially a man " who was so full of self- 
respect, domestic prudence, practical sagacity, wise re- 
serve, and canny discreetness as was our Shakespeare." 

I confess such arguments do not much impress 
me ; they seem rather out-of-date. Moreover, I do not 
believe that our author, whoever he was, trumpeted 
his own infamy at all. Some scrivener's apprentice 
stole the scrip — that seems far more feasible, and in that 
case such arguments fall to the ground. And Bacon's 
scrip seems far more likely to be lying about in 
reach of a publisher's pirate than Herbert's or Shake- 
speare's, for one had a scriptorium and ready " pens " 
or penmen, and would write to his brother Anthony for 
something fresh to copy so that the pens might not be 
idle. But the strongest imagination has failed to con- 
ceive Shakespeare's scriptorium or Shakespeare himself 
dashing off a long double letter to a learned foreign 
correspondent. 

But let us just glance at this Sonnet that every one 

* Cf. Massey, Sonnets, 1st edit., p. 434. 



246 THE SONNETS 

wishes to be quit of. It certainly seems to point to the 
author misconducting himself in some way with a lady of 
good rank or quality, and that her name might be Fitton, 
i.e. according to the punning customs of the time — " Fit 
one." The author's love-passion rose at her name, for he 
construed it as if she were " the Fit one " for him. He 
was not the only one who thus played on the name. On 
a monument of the Fitton family at Gawsworth in 
Cheshire, erected by Mary Fitton's sister-in-law, we are 
told of some members of the family who were 
" Fittons to weare a heavenly Diadem." 

In a former Sonnet, cxix., I have noticed a possible 
parallel allusion, where the author's eyes are said to have 
" been fitted out of their spheres " by his madding fever 
of love. And in Cymheline we find this (Act IV. sc. i.) 

" For 'tis said a woman's fitness comes by fits.' 

So there is a prima facie probability that Mistress Fitton 
is the " prize " of which the sonneteer was so proud. 
But if proud it was only for a moment, and in this Sonnet 
only where the flesh triumphs and conscience is put to 
sleep. In the next Sonnet and in many others, especially 
£xxxvii., he admits his blindness and folly in being 
attracted to such a wanton and common harlot as the 
" worser spirit " which did " suggest " or tempt him 
really was. " She was," he says, " a woman colour'd ill," 
and I am not at all sure that this means she was of a 
swarthy or dark complexion, or of an unhealthy com- 
plexion. I rather think it was her moral qualities that 
were aimed at, and I am reminded of Bacon's Essays on 
the Colours of Good and Evil. There is also a very 
technical and legal sense of the word colour which we 
meet in Lucrecc : 

" Why hunt I then for colour or excuse ? " 

and in many other passages of the Shakespeare works. 
All these point to Bacon rather than Shakespeare. 

And while just now on the subject of the " woman 
colour'd ill," I might refer to the other one of those — 
" Two loves I have of comfort and despair"— 



WALNUT-COLOURED HAIR 247 

I mean " the better angel " or " the man right fair." 
Shakespearians are divided, of course, as to who he is. 
But as he seems also to have misconducted himself with 
the wanton lady of the later Sonnets, and to have 

" Anchor'd in the bay where all men ride," 

so if Fitton is the right name here for the lady, then 
Pembroke will be the " man right fair." But Mr. Sidney 
Lee will have him to be Southampton throughout. 

Seeing how Mr. Sidney Lee changes his views and 
opinions about the Mr. W. H. of the Sonnets, and how 
confident he always is — he certainly does not beget the con- 
fidence in him which his abilities and knowledge deserve. 
Mr. S. Butler has a sly hit at him at p. 66 of his Shake- 
speare's Sonnets. Mr. Lee had been discussing the colour of 
Southampton's hair, and as he took Southampton to be 
the " man right fair " of this famous Sonnet, cxliv. (The 
Two Loves), he had to make this hair as light as possible 
in the pictures and portraits of the Earl that remain. 
Dealing with one such picture he says, " The colour of 
the hair in Southampton's portrait is walnut, but is 
darker now than when the picture was painted." Mr. 
Butler remarks on this as follows : " Judging from the 
illustration given (in Mr. Lee's published book), when he 
says that the hair is walnut in colour, he must mean 
' pickled walnut,' for a pickled walnut really is as black 
as the hair in the illustration ; but how pickled walnut 
can be called ' bright auburn ' is one of those puzzles the 
frequent recurrence of which detracts so seriously from 
the value of Mr. Lee's in many respects most interesting 
and useful work." * 

But here I must bring m}^ cursory view of the Sonnets 
to an end. The concluding eight (Sonnets cxlv.-clii.) 
all deal with the author's questionings and meditations 
concerning the conflict in him between Reason and 
Conscience on the one side and Physical Love or Lust 
on the other. He seems to have fallen, as far as we 
can reasonably interpret the language used. When 

* S. Butler, Son>u(s, p. 66. 



248 THE SONNETS 

the sportive blood was hot in the veins, then he found 
that 

" Love is too young to know what conscience is," 

and he seems to confess that he did '' betray " his 
" nobler part " to his " gross body's treason " (Sonnet 
CLi.). He was not alone in this — it is a frequent ex- 
perience with the frail children of men — and many far 
greater saints than Francis Bacon, and men too whose 
intellects, hke his, were of the lofty and philosophic 
order, men Hke St. Paul and Augustine, who delighted 
in the law of God after the inward man, but failed not to 
find another law in their members warring against the 
law of their mind, and bringing them into captivity to 
the law of sin in their members.* 

The autobiographical Sonnets end rather abruptly 
with No. CLii., where the author accuses himself of per- 
jured vows as well as the lady, and says : 

" I am perjur'd most ; 
For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee." 

I don't quite understand what he means by this. Tyler 
elucidates the passage thus : " ' To misuse thee,' i.e. To 
treat you in a manner entirely different from that in 
which you ought to be treated." Exactly so ; but one 
would like a little more light. 

The last two Sonnets do not belong to the series at 
all, and are alternative renderings of a poem from the 
Greek Anthology. They have been referred to elsewhere 
as showing scholarship beyond the Stratford player's 
reach. They are the contrasted attempts of a scholar's 
idle moments. They are, I believe, not so much original 
renderings, as improvements on other men's labours {more 
Baconico). For I find there are earlier attempts in 
English several years previously, and there is a good 
sonnet by Giles Fletcher, LL.D., in his Licia of 1593 
(Sonnet xxvii.), founded on the same epigram. This 
would be almost contemporary work. 

And here I will make a friendly appeal to Mr. Sidney 

* See also William Huntington's Posthumous Letters, ili. ig6, &c. (Load., 
181S). 



AN APPEAL 249 

Lee. I take it that he knows as much about Shakespeare's 
times and the surroundings of the Plays as any man 
living. He has made a complete change of front once in 
his Shakespearian studies, and I now ask him to make 
another even more important than the last. I ask him 
to admit that Bacon, not Shakespeare, wrote the Poems 
and Sonnets, and for the moment I leave the Plays out 
of the question altogether. I do not think that any 
feeling of shame or vexation need oppress him for a 
moment, if he would remember, as I do, what Cardinal 
Newman often said in his fine sermons at Oxford, before 
he himself made his great change of front and position. 
His view was that in matters of mere opinion to have 
changed frequently was a true sign of vitality — and 
never to change in any circumstances a sure sign of 
stagnation. May Mr. Lee's vitality increase as he pro- 
ceeds, and may his next criticism show the true sign of it. 
Having thus cursorily surveyed the Sonnets on the 
Baconian assumption of authorship, I would state as a 
general remark that I should not be surprised if some 
of them were written by Bacon for Southampton or 
Herbert to send to their lady-loves. It was not at all 
an unheard-of thing for a lover to get a poet to write 
a sonnet for him in the Elizabethan days. Thurio, 
in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, goes into the city to seek 
a gentleman who shall set a sonnet to music for the 
purpose of paying court to Sylvia. Gascoigne, who died 
in 1577, tells us he had been engaged to write for others 
in the same fashion. The author of the Forest of Fancy 
(1579) informs us that many of the poems were written 
for " persons who had occasion to crave his help in that 
behalf," and there are other instances as well. Now we 
know that Bacon had a confirmed habit of writing letters 
for other people and supplying " devices " for Essex and 
such like literary tricks, and there is good contemporary 
evidence by Marston (1598) and others that certain aristo- 
crats, apparently Essex and Southampton, had the repute 
of getting their literary work composed for them by 
another pen. We are told of court noblemen who were 



2SO THE SONNETS 

but brokers " of another's wit " who did " but champ 
that which another chewed," and this specially with 
regard to " fine set speeches " and " sonnetting " (Marston, 
Sat. I. 42-44). 

All these things add to the probability that some of 
the Sonnets were written by Bacon for some one else. 
If proved it would have little effect one way or the other 
on the question of authorship, but it would tend to re- 
lieve Bacon from the inference that he had a mistress of 
abandoned character. Of course the most inexcusable 
of all the Sonnets, morally speaking, is Sonnet CLi., 

" Love is too young to know what conscience is," 

and it is difficult to believe that Francis Bacon is the 
author of such a Sonnet. It is utterly opposed to 
Sonnet cxli., the tendency and spirit quite diverse. 
There seems also a hidden jesting obscenity in the last 
lines. It is thought by some critics that it is "one of 
Herbert's or Southampton's productions which by chance 
got mixed with the others." I wish it could be proved to 
be so. Ben Jonson's first and early opinion about Bacon 
tends to establish the Sonnet as representing Bacon's 
conscience fairly accurately : "It shall be in the power 
of thy chevril conscience to do right or wrong at thy 
pleasure, my pretty Alcibiades " {Poetaster, I. i). But 
Ben changed this view when he knew the man personally, 
and Bacon's later life bore out Jonson's later view. 



CHAPTER XII 

OF THE PARALLELISMS AND IDENTITIES BETWEEN THE 
PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE AND THE ACKNOWLEDGED 
WORKS OF BACON 

These are as plentiful as Falstaff's blackberries, and I 
feel somewhat as the humorous knight felt when asked 
for his reasons : " Give you a parallel on compulsion ? 
No. I will give no one a parallel on compulsion, nor yet 
of my own free wiU ; nor an identity either." They can 
be found easily enough. They grow on every bush of the 
Baconian nursery garden, and have been growing there 
for nearly forty years. They are a fruit free to all passers- 
by, and the nurserymen who look after the gardens say 
with one voice, " Taste and eat." But the men who 
have a reputation for being good judges of fruit, say they 
are not worth the ground they take up. 

Let the reader, I say, please himself as to trying this 
singular garden ; there are some odd bushes in it, and I 
hear that some of the out-of-the-way corners have been 
appropriated by strange possessors. Some say that at 
one end there is a " Paradise of Fools," and at another 
corner an odd gathering of men and women who, when 
they are reckoned up, are found to be mere ciphers. Let 
people find their parallelisms and identities themselves, 
and let them be sure of their own identity to begin with. 

I know fairly well what reward the world gives to such 
explorers, and has given for forty years, and so I shall 
not attempt to play second Kettle to Mrs. Pott. Neither 
do I wish to offer " oblations " to be received by critics 
with language that would hardly be tolerated in a tap- 
room. So I therefore follow the example of the famous 
chapter " On Snakes in Ireland " (or was it Iceland ?), 



252 NO BUSINESS DONE 

and say compendiously of this wonderful fruit from the 
Shakespeare Plays : 

" No business done in this department 
during the present important alterations.'''' 

And, indeed, what inducement can there be to bring such 
things before the eyes of people who would only see a 
wilderness full of Reeds shaken by the wind, or a desert 
of Potsherds scattered about the ground in sufficient 
numbers to make a second Monte Testaccio. 

It is the immense number of those scattered identities 
and their want of arrangement that forms their element 
of weakness, just as a large undisciplined rabble with a 
horde of camp-followers is weaker in reality than a small 
determined band of tried soldiers. Perhaps, however, 
there may be a smooth stone or two in my small 
wallet which might sink into the forehead of some 
Goliath among the critical Philistines ; but I shall not 
sling them. Time works wonders, and I shall leave this 
desert of broken reeds and crockery to old Father 
Chronos, in full confidence that he will make it ere long 
" blossom as the rose," and become a Garden of Pleasure 
to all lovers of English literature. 

Besides this, these identities and parallelisms, whether 
good or bad, are so easily demolished ; and if a rampant 
Shakespearian critic has a thousand or two of these 
Baconian cattle to flesh his eager sword with, and can 
choose his victims — why then, of course, down they go 
like sheep before Ajax, and he stalks through the field of 
slaughter triumphant, and more " cocksure " than ever. 
No ; this chapter shall contain no parallels. I am not 
producing any just now. 



CHAPTER XIII 

HAD BACON A MISTRESS, OR WAS HE INCLINED TO 
BE A MISOGYNIST ? 

On the Bacon theory of the Sonnets we are met with this 
serious objection — " History contains no record of Bacon 
keeping a mistress." Of course it is open to answer — 
" Neither does history contain any record that Shake- 
speare kept a mistress — and yet it has never prevented 
people, for more than two hundred years, beheving that 
he wrote the Sonnets autobiographically. But it is a 
strong and serious objection nevertheless, and raises an 
a -priori improbability, when we are asked to believe that 
Mary Fitton was Bacon's mistress. There is capital 
evidence for Bacon having the chance of knowing her 
intimately as the friend of his cousins the Russells, who 
were maids of honour with her and took their shares in 
the court festivities and masques ; and it is pretty certain 
that he would know her as an acquaintance before young 
Herbert would have a chance to do so. For Mary Fitton 
came to Court in 1597, and Herbert was not permanently 
in town till 1598. And it is quite certain that Mary 
Fitton was much more likely to be Bacon's mistress than 
to demean herself so far as to become mistress to a man 
of Shakespeare's position. Both suppositions seem im- 
probable a priori for a maid of honour in high esteem 
with the Queen, but the second supposition, which is 
the accepted one by so manj^ critics, seems absolutely 
out of court. 

There is a way out of our difficulty, and it is this. 
I have sometimes thought that some of the Sonnets which 
seem to connect their author with the Dark Lady or Mary 
Fitton, may have been written hy Bacon for Pembroke. 
This supposition has an air of a priori probability to 



254 HAD BACON A MISTRESS? 

commend it, for Bacon was an adept at this feigned 
composition for others, and it has the extra advantage 
of quite doing away with the stumbhng-block that 
Mistress Fitton was Bacon's mistress. It leaves her as 
Pembroke's mistress, but that is a historical fact well 
authenticated ; and it leaves us free to reject a guilty 
liaison between Bacon and Mary, of which history has 
left no scrap of evidence or suggestion. 

I wish I could accept this much easier theory, but 
the Sonnets do not seem to bear out this occasional 
feigned impersonation. The author (whether Bacon or 
Shakespeare) seems undoubtedly to have had " two 
loves " — the one " a man right faire," the other " a 
woman colour'd ill " ; and even if Bacon got tired of 
the " Dark Lady " and of 

" The expence of spirit in a waste of shame," 

and then became obsequious enough to pander to his 
friend's passion and write a Sonnet or two for his friend 
to send to the lady, we have still the initial difficulty of 
the loves of Bacon and Mary Fitton. 

The love of the author of the Sonnets for the " Dark 
Lady " was certainly of a peculiar kind, and is expressed 
in a manner perfectly unique — quite contrary to the 
pretty way of the lovelorn sonneteers of that age — a good 
proof that the " Dark Lady " was not a mere abstraction 
of the poet's mind, but a very real and uncommon person- 
ality. " These Sonnets to the ' Dark Lady ' are written 
on a burning theme, but they could not possibly woo the 
woman. Persons who serenade a lady do not usually 
approach her windows with a band of vulgar ' rough 
music' They do not remind her that she has broken 
her marriage-vows, decry her charms, ask her not to play 
the wolf in leading lambs astray, tell her that her breath 
' reeks,' and her breasts are black, her face is foul, and, 
to sum up, tell her she is as dark as night and as black 
as hell, with a view of gaining admission." So says 
Massey * very truly, and adds much more to the same 

* Supplemental Chapter, edit. 1872, p. 7. 



THE IDEAL OF THE SONNETS 255 

purpose ; but, ingenious as he so often is, he cannot 
explain why Shakespeare was such an extraordinary 
lover (for Massey is a staunch Shakespearian and laughs 
Bacon to scorn), or yet why Shakespeare should write 
feigned Sonnets for Pembroke and Southampton to Lady 
Rich, who was Massey's particular " Dark Lady," and 
who was old enough to be Pembroke's mother. 

In fact, Massey completely fails to fit Shakespeare 
to the circumstances here, nor do T see how any of the 
orthodox believers can do any better. 

But there is a famous man who fits the unusual cir- 
cumstances admirably, and that is old Aubrey's TratSepao-T?;?, 
Bacon. For that gifted genius was to a certain extent, 
in spite of his impassioned and lofty presentation of the 
tender passion in the play of Romeo and Juliet and else- 
where, at bottom a bit of a misogynist, which I have 
hinted at before as suggested by many depreciatory 
remarks about the love of women met with in the Sonnets 
and Plays, as well as in the acknowledged Essays of 
Francis Bacon. It may have come about in this way ; 
being an ardent lover of pure and beautiful youths, he 
may not have felt so much attracted by the other sex. 
We must always remember that the Ideal of the Sonnets, 
the Master-Mistress of the poet's passion, is a young man, 
with all the grace and tenderness, the changing hues and 
blushes of a bashful maiden. And we should always 
couple this fact with the strange love-ideals we meet with 
in so many of the earlier Plays — I mean the Rosalinds, 
the Julias, and the other " male impersonators " — grace- 
ful, slender girls in man's attire, with the doublet, hose, 
and other accessories of a courtly youth or pretty page.* 

But although this be so, it cannot be denied that the 
earlier plays of Shakespeare do certainly dwell more than 
is usual on certain changes of sexual appearance in young 
lads and young girls. After Aubrey's revelation we are 

* For the "other accessories" I can only refer the curious reader to 
Lucetta's words to JuHa in 7 he Two Gentlemen of Verona (Act II. vii. 53). 
Such matters were alluded to in contemporary Elizabethan literature without 
much scruple or offence, but it is not so nowadays. 



256 HAD BACON A MISTRESS? 

naturally led by such incidents of the Plays to look in 
the direction of Bacon and Mary Fitton rather than 
towards Will Shakespeare and Ann Hathaway. 

But after all, these suggestive incidents may be harm- 
less enough, and indeed one of the Sonnets, the famous 
" Master-Mistress " one (xx.), inclines us strongly to take 
the more lenient view. I will quote it here, so that the 
reader may judge : 

" A woman's face with Nature's owne hand painted, 
Haste thou, the Master Mistris of my passion, 
A woman's gentle hart but not acquainted 
With shifting change as is false women's fashion, 
An eye more bright then theirs, lesse false in rowling : 
Gilding the object where-upon it gazeth, 
A man in hew all Hews in his controwling, 
Which steales men's eyes and women's souls amaseth, 
And for a woman wert thou first created. 
Till Nature as she wrought thee fell a dotinge, 
And by addition me of thee defeated. 
By adding one thing to my purpose nothiftg. 

But sifice she prickt thee out for womeiUs pleasure, 
Mine be thy love and thy loves use their treasure." 

The two lines which I have put in italics are the more 
important ones with reference to what we are now con- 
sidering. I think they are witnesses in the writer's favour, 
and exclude the grosser view. I think also that there is 
a play upon words in the use of the phrase she prickt 
thee out for women's pleasure, and that it is distinctly in 
Bacon's manner. He had the defect, which even his friends 
admitted, that he could not pass by a jest, if opportunity 
offered. Ben Jonson, while praising Bacon after his 
death, could not forbear a reference to this, and tells us 
" his {i.e. Bacon's) language {when he could spare a jest) 
was nobly censorious." * 

Indeed the Sonnet, taken as a whole, seems to show 
pretty evidently that the love referred to in it was 
Platonical in the best sense of that word, and not after 
the unnatural or " wild " manner which we occasionally 

* Ben Jonson's Works, edit. Gifford, p. 749. 



PARALLEL CASES 257 

hear of even in these refined and civilised days. It 
may have been " more Greek than Enghsh," but this 
may be attributed to the refined Platonism of ItaUan 
Renaissance culture, with which Bacon would be well 
acquainted. 

We would accept any reasonable explanation rather 
than the gross charge which some might be inclined to 
draw from old Aubrey's word. The poet Gray and his 
Swiss friend Bonstetten have been adduced as forming a 
strictly parallel case.* And so has Michael Angelo, who 
had a strong passion for a youthful friend. f 

Bonstetten was a Swiss youth of quality, who went 
to Cambridge with an introduction to Gray from his friend 
Norton NichoUs ; and in Gray's letters both to NichoUs 
and to Bonstetten himself there are close parallels to the 
feelings so beautifully phrased in the Sonnets — especially 
as to the pangs of absence : " Alas ! how do I every 
moment feel the truth of what I have somewhere 
read : ' Ce n'est pas le voir, que de s'en souvenir ' ; 
and yet that remembrance is the only satisfaction I 
have left. My life now is but a conversation with 
your shadow," &c. And another letter warns the youth 
against the vices to which his youth and good looks, 
and the example of his own class, leave him peculiarly 
exposed. 

But the case of Michael Angelo is even stronger. 

" Michael Angelo's relation to Messer Tommaso de' Cavalieri 
presents the most interesting parallel to the attitude which 
Shakespeare adopted towards William Herbert. We find the 
same expressions of passionate love from the older to the younger 
man ; but here it is still more unquestionably certain that we 
have not to do with mere poetical figures of speech, since the 
letters are not a whit less ardent and enthusiastic than the 
Sonnets. The expressions in the Sonnets are sometimes so 
warm that Michael Angelo's nephew, in his edition of them, 

* The Rev. Professor Beeching on the Sonnets : Cortihill Magazine for 
Feb. 1902. 

+ G. Brandes, Shakespeare, 1898, i. 343. 

R 



258 HAD BACON A MISTRESS? 

altered the word Signiore into Signora, and these poems, like 
Shakespeare's, were for some time supposed to have been 
addressed to a woman." 

I have given barely a tithe of the arguments and 
letters by which the Rev. Prof. Beeching and George 
Brandes illustrate these close parallels. I think they 
have shown good cause for a belief in the innocent 
and Platonic character of the warm love depicted in 
the Sonnets. They are both orthodox Shakespearians, 
and are thinking of defending the character of the 
" Swan of Avon." I am thinking of a very different 
personage, intellectually, socially, and, I should cer- 
tainly add, physically — but I hail their Platonic parallels 
with gratitude, and am glad to have Plato on my 
side. Malo err are cum Platone quam cum [aliis] vera 
sentire. 

Bacon's real character has been more or less a mystery 
to most of his biographers — a mystery that we cannot 
expect to be ever made clear. But Mr. Abbott, who 
perhaps, after Mr. Spedding, has bestowed the greatest 
thought on this subject, makes a general remark which is 
worth notice in connection with the scandals we have 
been considering. He says : " All men lead double lives, 
a private and a public ; but if we may believe Bacon's 
own account about himself — and it agrees with many 
casual and unpremeditated indications in his writings — 
he was a man in whom the two lives were to an extra- 
ordinary degree separable." This is a wise saying and 
worthy of all acceptation. It will account for his great 
intimacy with Perez while he was hard at work in the 
other life at the finest passages of Romeo and Juliet, or 
whatever other immortal drama was on hand at the time. 
It would also account for any possible scandal that there 
might have been connected with his earlier life and the 
Sonnets, even if it occurred when he was meditating 
the Greatest Birth of Time, or the best Policy for the 
Queen. 

After the storm fell upon him and he was wrecked 
late in life, the double life becomes less apparent, and 



BACON'S ULTIMATE VICTORY 259 

gradually fades away. The cleansing fires had purged 
the dross, and he could say with truth then : 

" I gaze at a field in the Past 
Where I sank with the body at times in the sloughs of a low desire. 
But I hear no yelp of the beast, and the Man is quiet at last 
As he stands on the heights of his life with a glimpse of a height that 
is higher.* 

We get Francis Bacon's later " glimpses " in his 
Prayers, found after his death, in that translation of the 
few Psalms from a sick-bed, and also in his religious 
" Confession of the Faith " that was in him. For although 
this last was composed in earlier troubles (1602 perhaps), 
it was never annulled. 

After all that has been said for and against this most 
illustrious Englishman who is, I hope and believe, eventu- 
ally to be securely enthroned without serious opposition 
on the summit of Parnassus, I must give it as my final 
opinion that he was of a nobler nature and intellect than 
the world has given him credit for. He has been most 
unjustly maligned in Pope's well-known lines, and the 
words, or rather, the worst word, has been quoted against 
Bacon so often, that some of the mud contained therein 
has been bound to stick — when flung, as it must be, 
against a man unable now to reply or excuse himself. 
Dr. Rawley, his friend, chaplain, literary executor, and 
biographer, is a better authority for Bacon's character 
than Pope, that crooked little " note of interrogation," 
and the good qualities that he bears witness to in the 
moral and intellectual life of the great Lord Chancellor 
in his later years seem to bear the stamp of reasonable 
truth and impartial justice. If Lady Anne had good 
cause to complain of her younger son's carelessness for 
religion — or for the puritanical form of it that she pro- 
fessed — if that same younger son afterwards passed 
through a dark period of pessimistic scepticism very 
nearly allied to absolute Unbelief, still these were only 
" murmurings in the wilderness " of one who was to 

* Tennyson, Demeter and other Poet/is (Lond. 1893), p. 159. 



26o HAD BACON A MISTRESS? 

reach in later years a better spirit and to die on the 
Mount in the felt Presence of God Himself. It was a 
saying of his that " a little philosophy maketh men apt 
to forget God, as attributing too much to second causes ; 
but deep philosophy bringeth a man back to God again " ; 
and here no doubt he spoke of his own experience. His 
chaplain also tells us that " he was able to render a 
reason of the hope which was in him, which that writing 
of his of the Confession of Faith doth abundantly testify." 
We may accept this high testimony, I think, as well as 
the many other good qualities which Dr. Rawley assigns 
to his friend in the biography which was published about 
thirty years after Bacon's death, but had been compiled 
some years previously, and was published by Rawley in 
his own lifetime. Many people bitterly resent the " de- 
throning of Shakespeare " because they have, from tradi- 
tion and fashion, come to view the man and his genius 
as something so sublime and wellnigh divine, that to 
speak anything derogatory against such a man is almost 
flat blasphemy. But this is pure idol-worship, founded 
on sentiment rather than on fact. As a matter of fact 
and evidence we may safely say that Francis Bacon, 
with all his faults, was a man of a higher, nobler, and 
diviner nature than William Shakespeare ; and that 
therefore no harm is done to the moral convictions of 
any one, by dethroning the smaller man and placing the 
grander man in the vacant seat on the summit of Par- 
nassus. 

There seems little reason to doubt that, even if Francis 
Bacon had a " storm and stress " period and also a 
" dark " period in his earlier years, he found a philosophic 
and religious calm later on. His " Confession of Faith " 
is a noble one indeed ; and has been accepted as a genuine 
and conscientious account of his ultimate convictions by 
his best biographers. It is far too little known. As 
Sped ding says : "If any one wishes to read a summa 
theologies digested into seven pages of the finest English 
of the days when its tones were finest, he may read it 
here" (vii. 215). C. de Remusat says: "On ne^voit 



BACON'S WILD OATS 261 

nulle raison de supposer que cette pi^ce, qu'il ne publia 
pas, ne fut point I'expression sincere de sa conviction." * 
A high ecclesiastical authority, viz. Abbas Jac. Andr. 
Emery, Congreg. St. Sulpicii generalis superior, says : 
" Cette confession met dans la plus parfaite evidence la 
religion de Bacon, elle donne encore la mesure de I'eleva- 
tion de son g^nie, elle abonde en idees veritablement 
sublimes ; et ce qui est encore singulier dans cette piece 
c'est que quoique I'auteur recut dans la communion de 
I'Eglise protestante, il serait difficile d'y trouver quelque 
article qui ne put etre avoue par un theologien de I'Eglise 
Romaine." 

This last remark from the famous theological school of 
St. Sulpice agrees wonderfully with a similar fact that 
exists in connection with the immortal Shakespeare Plays. 
No one seems able to state clearly or positively whether 
the author of these Plays was a Puritan or an Anglican 
or a Catholic. Both in the Confession of Faith and in 
the Plays, the infused religious element is so lofty and 
so comprehensive that it seems to include both the 
opposing sections of the Church, as they then were. 
Bacon was as universal a genius in religion as in other 
provinces of the human intellect. 

It may appear to some that these sincere religious 
convictions of Bacon's later days quite exclude the proba- 
bility of his having a mistress or a scandal in his younger 
days. I cannot think so. I do not see why Bacon was 
not as likely to sow his wild oats as a Saint Augustine 
and many another man who afterwards came to die in 
the odour of sanctity, having " witnessed a good con- 
fession." I do not think that Bacon, as a young man, 
separated himself from his coetaneans as did " the Lady 
of Christ's," in certain special matters, some forty years 
later. It was an allowed saying in those times that 
" nowadays no courtier but has his mistress, no captain 
but has his cockatrice, no cuckold but has his horns, and 
no fool but has his feathers " ; and I think Bacon fell in 
with the conventions of the age for a courtier. Surely 

* Bacon, Sa Vie, Sec, Paris, 1858. 



262 HAD BACON A MISTRESS? 

noscitur a sociis helps me here ; and the Sonnets con- 
nected with Southampton and Pembroke bear curious 
witness to the fact. 

The chosen companions of Bacon's early middle period 
of life were men of loose principles, and both from his 
mother's letters about him, and from his own evident 
predilection for masques and mummeries, he was no 
" saintly confessor " up to the time of at least 1601 or 
1602, when he said in Hamlet : " I am myself indifferent 
honest ; but yet I could accuse me of such things that 
it were better my mother had not borne me." Perhaps 
the " bruits " and scandal connected with him had made 
him more careful since 1597 or 1598, when, if we may 
take the scant evidence of the Sonnets, he was beginning 
to be " vile esteemed," and to be fearful that Southampton 
would shun his close acquaintance. It is not at all un- 
likely that the ill odour in which he found himself both 
before and after the Essex trial, and the dark period in 
which he was thereby involved, had grave effects on his 
personal character, and that these and his thoughts of a 
well-dowered wife checked very considerably the grosser 
elements of his nature. I seem almost able, from Hamlet's 
remarks to Horatio about the gravedigger just before 
Yorick's skull had been thrown out, to gather the very 
year of the " bruits " among the vulgar, the mendacia 
famcB which Bacon refers to in his letters to Sir Robert 
Cecil and others in 1598. Hamlet says : " How absolute 
the knave is ! we must speak by the card, or equivocation 
will undo us. By the Lord, Horatio, these three years 
I have taken note of it ; the age is grown so picked, that 
the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the 
courtier, he galls his kibe." 

Now, taking Hamlet to be written in 1601 or a little 
earlier (for I do not think Bacon had anything to do with 
the Uy-Hamlet we hear of in 1589 ; this was Kyd's), we 
get by subtracting the three years of the text the very 
time when, as we have supposed from the Sonnets and 
other grounds, the public adverse rumours were strongest 
against Bacon. What if the slander was a country one 



BACON'S WILD OATS 263 

connected with Gorhambury, and hushed up with diffi- 
culty among a rural population ? Village slander spreads 
like wildfire, but seldom gets into print. Hamlet speaking 
specially of the peasant leads one to think of village gossip, 
which notoriously puts the worst construction on doubtful 
matters. What if we have here a reminiscence of the 
" old scent " which Coke was following up when he talked 
about the capias utlegatum being clapped on Bacon's back, 
and used other insulting and disgraceful words ? 

I know the chief authorities on Bacon's life take the 
capias utlegatum incident to refer to Bacon's arrest for 
debt in 1598, but I think the reference is to something 
much more serious than this — either to the treason in 
being the author of Richard II. (but there would be no 
need of " disgraceful words " here), or, as I believe, to 
some scandalous charge evaded by Bacon ; this was 
felony. 

I am willing to allow all that can possibly or probably 
be said in Francis Bacon's favour regarding the "wild 
oats " of his youth, but I confess I do not like the 
frequency with which beautiful and graceful young girls 
don the male attire, and especially the unsavoury way in 
which they discuss their male dress in the Shakespeare 
Plays. This last is an unusual feature in Renaissance 
Romance or Drama, and is rather suggestive of Bacon, 
as it sends our thoughts to Aubrey's Greek appellative 
and the words that follow about Bacon's "minions." 
Moreover, the name Rosalind chose in As You Like It, 
when she was disguised as a young lad, was Ganymede, a 
distinctly unpleasant name through its classical allusions; 
for Ganymede was a minion par excellence. I know, of 
course, that this was the name in Lodge's original tale, 
from which the play of ^s You Like It was to a great 
extent derived, but the author of the play could easily 
have altered the name if he had chosen to do so — indeed 
he did alter most of the names — but he kept Ganymede 
and one or two others. But I lay very little stress on 
this name being chosen, for I think it is far more likely 
that the name was chosen casually and harmlessly rather 



264 . HAD BACON A MISTRESS? 

than that Bacon and Lodge should be written down 
Arcades ambo, or that we should say of them, as Dogberry 
said of his prisoners," 'Fore God, they are both in a tale." 
And who is there acquainted with Renaissance literature 
who does not know that it was one of the commonest 
incidents of Italian and Spanish novels for young girls 
to dress themselves in the attire of a page so that they 
could follow their true love and be near him ? Bandello's 
Tales and the Diana of Montemayor are full of such male 
impersonators, and I have often thought that it was 
through reading the Diana of the Spanish novelist, which 
had just been translated in 1598 for the English upper 
classes, that Mary Fitton went to meet her lover Pembroke 
with her clothes tucked up like a man. She had been 
reading the last fashionable novel, and she was madcap 
enough to do anything that was up-to-date and out of 
the common. 

And while on the subject of Montemayor's Diana, 
mention should be made of its connection with the author- 
ship of the Plays. It really affords a strong proof of the 
Baconian theory, for The Two Gentlemen of Verona is 
based on incidents in Montemayor's Diana, and this 
Shakespearian play was written before Diana had been 
translated from the Spanish, for it is mentioned by 
Francis Meres in 1598, and had most likely been written 
and acted long before this date. For in 1584-5, as we 
know by the Court Records, The History of Felix and 
Philomcna was played before the Queen at Greenwich. 
Now Felix and Felismena are hero and heroine of Monte- 
mayor's novel, and so the Queen would be hstening in 
1585 to an imitation or reproduction in some form of the 
Diana, not at all unlikely to be an early attempt of young 
Francis Bacon which was afterwards revised 7nore sua, 
and presented as the Two Gentlemen of Verona, which is 
itself an early play, as we judge by expressions in it 
reminding us of the early Sonnets. But the great proof 
in favour of Bacon that this play affords, is that the 
whole atmosphere of it, so to speak, is in the highest 
degree aristocratic, and far removed from that which 



MONTEMAYOR'S DIANA . 265 

Will Shakespeare breathed. It was clearly a play for 
the court, and the allusions would be well understood 
by an aristocratic audience. For most of the ladies and 
gentlemen who aspired to frequent court society were 
fairly acquainted with the latest novels in their original 
foreign languages, and there were generally translations 
for those few who could only read or speak their own 
vernacular. Now, since the fashionable romance of 
Diana was not translated into English till 1598, it looks 
pretty evident that the author of The Two Gentlemen of 
Verona would either have to translate from the original 
Spanish or some foreign version of it, or else borrow any 
manuscript English version he could procure. There 
might just possibly be two English MS. versions finished, 
viz., that of Barth. Yonge, eventually published in 1598, 
and that of Thomas Wilson, dedicated to the Earl of 
Southampton in 1596, and perhaps written at an earlier 
date. But whether the author grappled with the foreign 
languages, or borrowed the English translations before 
they were published, in both cases Francis Bacon is far 
the more likely man. As for Will Shakespeare attempting 
Diana either in Spanish or Italian, it seems to me a 
ridiculous supposition, nor would he fare much better 
in French. 

.Sir Henry Irving asked the pertinent question : " Why 
on earth could not Bacon let the world know in his life- 
time that he had written Shakespeare ? " Mrs. Gallup's 
reply was : " The principal reason was because the history 
of his life was largely given in those Plays, not alone in 
the bi-literal cypher but in the word-cypher, and the 
revelation of that in the lifetime of Queen Elizabeth 
would have cost him his own life. He hoped against 
hope to the very day of the Queen's death that she would 
relent and proclaim him heir to the throne. But he 
states that the witnesses were then dead, and the papers 
that would then authenticate his claims destroyed." 

My reply is a very different one. It was not through 
any " more scandals about Elizabeth," but on account 
of a personal scandal of his own, which might involve 



266 HAD BACON A MISTRESS? 

also people of high rank who were still alive. And if it 
be further asked why did not Bacon's own private secre- 
tary Rawley, who lived after him and edited his works, 
or Ben Jonson, who lived ten or eleven years after him, 
give to the world the wondrous news, my suggestion is 
that if the}'' knew it, which I think extremely likely, they 
refrained from pity and sympathy with a great and 
unfortunate man latterly, who had made them firm 
friends of his, and who earnestly desired to throw a veil 
of concealment over the early errors of his sportive blood, 
which had been so long renounced and atoned for by his 
pure devotion to Dame Nature, his new method of enlist- 
ing her in the service of man, and his admirable philan- 
thropia or lifelong endeavour for the public good. 

But it will, I hope, have already been gathered from 
previous remarks of mine that I see another mistress con- 
nected with Bacon who is certainly very different from 
Mary Fitton the maid of honour ; — different in age and 
experience and in social position — an earlier flame and a 
more unworthy and degrading one — a more notorious and 
infamous one as well, if Marston really meant that she was 
mixed up in Marlowe's early death. Apparently she was 
connected with the habilu/cs of the playhouses, and known 
to Southampton and Bacon in that way first. Or if we 
put aside Marston's allusion to Marlowe as uncertain, 
there is other evidence pointing to a married " Dark 
Lady," a citizen's wife of doubtful virtue, whose shop 
was the resort of the fashionable gallants. And then 
there is Mrs. Stopes' suggestion that it was Jacquinetta 
Vautrollier, the dark French connection (by marriage) of 
Richard Field the publisher. Since Field published 
Bacon's Venus and Adonis in 1593, this seems to be a 
shrewd suggestion, by no means improbable. But Mrs. 
Stopes has no evidence to back it up, except that Field 
was a Stratford man and knew Shakespeare the Player. 



CHAPTER XIV 

BACON AS A POET 

After all, I believe the true estimate of Bacon will be 
found to be this, that he was not nearly so eminent a 
philosopher as he was a poet and orator, and withal a 
supreme master of human speech. I suppose no one 
knew him more intimately and with more freedom from 
" concealment " than his great friend Tobie Matthew. 
His testimony is therefore of prime importance, and is 
to the following effect : "A man so rare in knowledge 
of so many several kinds, endued with the facility and 
felicity of expressing it all, in so elegant, significant, so 
abundant and yet so choice and ravishing a way of words, 
of metaphors and allusions, as perhaps the world hath 
not seen since it was a world." * 

The general belief of critics has nearly always been 
that Bacon was essentially prosaic, not to say prosy. His 
closest friend and contemporary, who was frequently 
corresponding with him, and was doubtless admitted to 
his secret, thought very differently. I maintain that his 
carefully expressed opinion as above would outweigh the 
consensus of scores of so-called " critics of style." Un- 
fortunately, too, Mr. Spedding, who has studied Bacon's 
known works more carefully perhaps than any man living 
or dead, has helped to endorse this opinion of the absence 
of poetic fire in Bacon with his own weighty signature, 
and has practically declared that Bacon was incapable 
of writing either the Plays or the Poems, and that the 
styles of the two writers were perfectly distinct and un- 
mistakable. These dogmatic assertions, uttered from 

* Matthew, Collection of Letters, 1 660, Preface. 

267 



268 BACON AS A POET 

behind the segis of unquestioned authority, have with 
many people put an end to any further research into 
the question. This is unfortunate, for really Spedding, 
with all his deep acquaintance with Bacon's Life, 
Letters, and Works, knew hardly more than any one 
else about that very important period of Bacon's life 
between the ages of twenty and thirty. It is during 
this decennium, and a little earlier, that the flowers of 
poetic fancy are generally wont to bud and blossom, 
and it is just this period of Bacon's life that is so little 
known. 

If Spedding had known what young Francis was doing 
in the years 1580 to 1590 as well as he knew his life later 
on, his dictum would have been much more weighty ; 
but as it is, I hold that it has no warrant to carry con- 
clusive conviction with it, especially when we remember 
that this opinion was probably founded on Bacon's own 
remarks on Poetry in the Advancement of Learning. But 
it is quite possible, and I think probable, that here Bacon 
" concealed " his real attitude to both Poetry and the 
Drama, intentionally. Thus Spedding would be misled. 
But even the careful and accurate Spedding was incon- 
sistent, for although it is his well-known ipse dixit 
against the Baconian authorship which has strengthened 
the orthodox belief to such a degree that very few 
take the trouble to search into the dispute any further, 
yet this absolute anti - Baconian almost "gives him- 
self away " with the following remark : " The truth 
is that Bacon was not without the fine frenzy of the 
poet. . . . Had his genius taken the ordinary direc- 
tion, I have little doubt that it would have carried 
him to a place among the great poets." Yet this 
was the supreme authority who doubted whether there 
were five consecutive lines in either Bacon or Shake- 
speare that could possibly be interchanged and not 
recognised at once by any person " familiar with their 
several styles " ! ! 

It is far too much taken for granted in this controversy 
that there is an absolute consensus of opinion against the 



BACON AS A POET 269 

poetical gifts of Francis Bacon. This is not the case, as 
the following extracts show : 

"The poetic faculty was powerful in Bacon's mind." — 
Macaulay. 

" Another virtue of the book (Bacon's Essays) is one which 
is not frequently found in union with the scientific or philo- 
sophical intellect ; viz., a poetical imagination. Bacon's similes, 
for their aptness and their vividness, are of the kind of which 
Shakespeare, or Goethe, or Richter might have been proud." 
— John Stuart Blackie. 

" To this Bacon would bring something of that high poetical 
spirit which gleams out at every page of his philosophy." 
— Charles Knight. 

"Reason in him works like an instinct; the chain of thought 
reaches to the highest heaven of invention." — William Hazlitt. 

"We have only to open The Advancement of Learning to see 
how the Attic bees clustered above the cradle of the new philo- 
sophy. Poetry pervaded the thoughts, it inspired the similes, it 
hymned in the majestic sentences of the wisest of mankind." 
— E. Buhver Lyttoti. 

There are many more, and they are the common 
property of any reader who is unprejudiced enough to 
open the leaves of Mr. Edwin Reed's anti-Shakespearian 
works. Unfortunately he seldom gives chapter or verse 
for these extracts, and I have not taken the trouble to 
verify them, but I believe there is every reason for accept- 
ing them as correct. I have noticed one myself from 
De Maislre, and have given it, with the reference, 
further on. 

In later life Bacon's views with regard to Poetry seem 
to have considerably altered. The difference between 
the views held in the Advancement of Learning of 1605, 
and the remarks on Poetry in the revised and enlarged 
edition of the same book in 1623, is very striking. In 
his later years Poetry holds a far less important place 
among the elements of human knowledge and progress. 
In Advancement of Learning (1605) he claims that " for 
the expression of affections, passions, corruptions, and 
customs, we are beholden to poets' more than to philo- 



270 BACON AS A POET 

sophers' works." In the corresponding place of the 
revised edition of 1623 he drops this claim altogether. 
In 1605 " Poesy " is declared to be one of the three 
" goodly fields " — " history " and " experience " being 
the other two — where " grow observations " concerning 
the " several characters and tempers of men's natures 
and dispositions." In 1623 this is omitted, or at least 
depreciated considerably, because poets are so apt to 
" exceed " the truth. In fact, as E. W. S. justly remarks,* 
the revised edition of 1623 so underrates the value of 
Poesy and Works of the Imagination, that we are led to 
think " that Bacon, if he had not been hampered by 
previous publications, would have deposed both Poetry 
and Imagination from the high place they still continued 
to occupy in his system." 

I suggest that as Bacon grew older he looked with 
much less appreciation on his earlier contributions to 
Poetry and its criticism. He thought far less of the 
Shakespeare Poems and Plays than he did in younger 
days. His New Method, his Novum Organum, and Instau- 
ratio possessed him and cast out much of his earlier 
aspirations. Moreover, his philosophical methods could 
be exactly preserved in a language that would live (Latin), 
while his " works of recreation " could not be so pre- 
served. 

May not these things partly account for the strange 
neglect and concealment of the earlier and immortal 
productions of his genius, and for his disregard of the 
fame that might attach to their author ? I say " partly 
account " advisedly, for I have given other reasons else- 
where for this concealment, viz., the wish in early days 
not to offend relations and friends ; not to bring envy 
or ill-odour on himself ; not to rouse personal controversy, 
and such like. I venture therefore to suggest, although 
against enormous odds, that Bacon was a born poet, and 
that it was the Muses who were the first to claim that 
incomparable intellect for themselves. But circum- 

* Shakespeare- Bacon, an Essay, 1899, p. 41, where all the references are 
given. 



BACON'S EARLY GENIUS 271 

stances were dead against his open profession of being 
their true hegeman. He knew well enough where his 
genius delighted to lead him, but his position in life and 
his surroundings forced him to follow his inner impulse 
not openly to be seen of all men, but hidden safely under 
a mask. Openly he became a great lawyer and politician, 
but his heart was not in the work — multum incola fuit 
anima niea was his oft-quoted complaint. He kept his 
countenance beneath his self-imposed literary mask with 
great caution and skill, and like a Franciscan brother 
in his cowl and rope-girdled cassock, he died and was 
buried, still wearing it. 

Some of us, at last, are beginning to lift up the edges 
of it. Throughout his whole life, he voluntarily lifted off 
the mask to but very few — to his dear brother Anthony, 
his close friend Sir Tobie, his literary adviser Bishop 
Andrewes — perhaps these wellnigh complete the list. 
There were no doubt some others who discovered the 
secret against his wish — and among these I should put 
Ben Jonson, Marston, Hall, Ned Blount, and some of the 
piratical printers and their jackals ; but both the scandal 
of the Sonnets and the face behind the mask were kept 
from public observation and comment in a truly marvel- 
lous way. The Star Chamber and its terrors had, I 
believe, somewhat to do with this, for the law of libel 
and the charge of scandalum magnatum could be very 
effectively used in those days by people high in authority. 

I here maintain that Bacon's genius led him in his 
earlier days to poetry and to a style of oratorical prose, 
which for singularity of language, largeness of vocabulary, 
and richness of illustrations has hardly ever been equalled 
in our language. He showed his unique mastery of the 
English language both early and late in life, and the 
main difference between the two periods seems to be that 
he tried to be less ornate, less " spangled," and " more 
current in the style " in his later years. He had learned 
by the experience of years that this innate magniloquence 
to which his genius led him was sometimes against him 
rather than not, and so we find he asks his friend Sir Tobie 



272 BACON AS A POET 

to mark any passages (in a MS. forwarded) where he 
(Bacon) may have yielded to his genius [indulgere genio). 
He intended to revise such. We have also Bacon's own 
clearest evidence that he was " a man born for literature " 
{litter as) rather than for anything else, and " forced against 
his own genius (contra genium suum) into affairs, by he 
knew not what fate." * Dr. Garnett, writing to the 
Times for July 5, 1902, suggests that the fact of Bacon 
being a great lawyer is very much against the Baconian 
authorship of the Plays, for no one illustrious in forensic 
circles has ever produced a masterpiece either in poetry 
or the drama. Dr. Garnett is not likely to be incorrect 
in his literary facts, but I demur to his Baconian inference, 
for Bacon was a lawyer in spite of himself, and was thus 
an exception to the general rule. 

But how any literary student of Bacon can fail to 
see in his works the vera insignia of a poet, or pass over 
without notice the many spolia opima of our vernacular 
therein contained, is to me most surprising. Long ago 
Shelley said Bacon " was a poet," and his insight ought 
to be worth something, for he bore the true stamp of the 
divine art himself, and had only Bacon's prose to guide 
him. The fact seems to be that Francis Bacon began to 
be a concealed poet as early as 1579, ^^^ was laying the 
foundations of the Plays and Poems that were to make 
another man immortal during all the ten years, 1580 to 
1590, of which we know so little. He was then a great 
admirer of Sir Philip Sidney, and we shall never perhaps 
know how often these two illustrious men discussed in 
friendly conference " the excellence of sweet Poesie." 
Later on, when his Novum Organum engrossed his thoughts, 
he altered his views about poetry and word-painting, and 
misled his critics and editors right up to the present day. 
He, who as plain Francis Bacon had the finest collection 
of " spangled " words, and the most extensive vocabulary 
of all the gentlemen of the " Innes of Court," when he 
was getting older and advancing slowly to the highest 
offices of the land, seemed to despise the former glories 

* Spedding, Bacon's Works, i. 792. 



PYGMALION'S FRENZY 273 

of his vocabulary, as a hindrance both to philosophy and 
truth. " It is," he says, " the first distemper of learning 
when men study words and not matter. ... It seems to 
me that Pygmalion's frenzy is a good emblem or por- 
traiture of this vanity ; for words are but the images of 
matter ; and except they have life of reason and invention, 
to fall in love with them is all one as to fall in love with 
a picture." * We must be careful, however, to take 
these remarks as only directed against bare and excessive 
verbiage — words without life in them ; but if they had 
" life of reason and invention," such as the " Tables of 
Invention," which were, so to speak, " living " [tanquam 
vivcB), it was a very different matter. 

I will say no more just now as to the new indications 
I think I have discovered of Bacon's interest in poetry. 
That part shall be left until some future work. We have 
already seen how Bacon, when writing to Essex in 1594, 
hints that he has been writing poetry, and speaks without 
concealment of " the waters of Parnassus." There is 
another pertinent instance later on in 1599. Bacon, at 
that date, writes to Lord Henry Howard, a scholar and 
litterateur, in these terms : " For your Lordship's love, 
rooted upon good opinion I esteem it highly, because I have 
tasted of the fruits of it ; and we both have tasted of the 
best waters, in my account, to knit minds together.'''' A 
plain enough confession that Bacon was a lover of the 
Muses. 

But perhaps the strongest statement that Bacon was a 
poet comes from a literary enemy, a Frenchman and a rigid 
Roman Catholic. One of the severest attacks ever made 
on Bacon's philosophy was the Examen de la Philosophic 
de Bacon, by Count Joseph de Maistre, published post- 
humously (Paris, 1836). It is one long tirade against 
Bacon, calling him an atheist, a hypocrite, and a charlatan ; 
and yet, strange to say, the tirade abates its force towards 
the end, and admits his poetic genius and some other 
good qualities in the following terms : "La nature I'avait 
cr66 bel esprit, moraliste sense et ing^nieux, ecrivain 

* Adziamemettt of Lea>nmg, Book I. iv. 2. 

S 



274 BACON AS A POET 

elegant, avec je ne sais quelle veine poetique qui lui 
foumit sans cesse une foule d'images extremement 
heureuses, de maniere que ses ecrits, comme fables, sont 
encore tres amusant." And elsewhere (vol. i. p. 5) he 
says " rarement il resiste a I'envie d'etre poete." This 
recalls Shelley's statement that Bacon was a poet, and 
also Bacon's own question to his friend Tobie Matthew 
as to whether he had given way to his genius (poetry ?) 
in his last words sent to his friend on approval. 

My strong impression is that with Francis Bacon love 
for literature and poetry came long before his great 
passion for science, and one was in fact eventually extin- 
guished by the other. Hear his own words : " Poetry 
is as it were a dream of learning. . . . But now it is 
time for me to become fully awake, to lift myself up 
from the earth, and to wing my way through the liquid 
ether of philosophy and the sciences." * But he could 
not express his simple intention without falling (as above) 
into poetical prose. Such was his genius, as he himself 
knew and admitted. How modern Shakespearians can 
insist upon denying to Bacon any claim whatever to pose 
as a poet, is one of the greatest puzzles to me in the 
whole controversy. 

Extant seventeenth-century testimonies to the exist- 
ence of a most intimate relation between Bacon and the 
Muses, Apollo, Poetry, Helicon, Parnassus, &c., are 
embarrassingly numerous. Thomas Randolph, in Latin 
verses published in 1640, but probably written some 
fourteen years earlier, says Phoebus was accessory to 
Bacon's death, because he was afraid lest Bacon should 
some day come to be crowned King of Poetry or the 
Muses. Further on the same writer declares that as 
Bacon " was himself a singer," he did not really need to 
be celebrated in song by others. George Herbert calls 
Bacon the colleague of Sol (Apollo). Thomas Campion 
addresses Bacon thus : " Whether the thorny volume of 
the Law, or the Schools, or the Sweet Muse allure thee." 
George Wither in his Great Assizes at Parnassus, 1644, 

* Spedding, Bacon's Works, i. 539. 



CONTEMPORARY EVIDENCE 275 

makes Bacon Chancellor of Parnassus and Sir Philip 
Sidney High Constable. And there are many other 
similar praises in the Mantes Verulamiani which were 
prefixed to Gilbert Wats's translation of the De Augnientis 
in 1640. All these evidences, and more, have been before 
the world for many many years and no one seems to give 
any heed to them. The list could easily be increased, 
but is it worth while ? Would it avail anything to con- 
vince people who in a great majority hold a very strong 
opinion that Bacon was the exact opposite of a poet, and 
could not write a humorous line to save his life ? Experi- 
ence has taught me that it will not be of the slightest 
use. So I forbear ; they must keep their opinions, and 
I will keep mine until I hear evidence to overthrow it. 
And out of the many other proofs I could give I will 
choose but one. It is by a contemporary poet, John 
Davies of Hereford, and openly addressed to Bacon in 
print while he was alive. 

To the royall, ingenious, and all learned knight. 

Sir Francis Bacon. 

Thy bounfy and the Beauty of thy witt, 
Compris'd in lists oi Law and learned Arts, 
Each making thee for great ifftploitnent fitt. 
Which now thou hast (though short of thy deserts), 
Compells my Pen to let fall shining I/ike 
And to bedew the Bates that deck thy Front ; 
And to thy health in Helicon to drinke 
As to her Bellamour, the Muse is wont : 
For thou dost her embozom ; and dost use 
Her company for sport 'twixt grave affairs, 
So utterest Law the livelyer through thy Muse, 
And for that all thy Notes are sweetest Aires ; 
My muse thus notes thy worth in every Line 
With yncke which thus she sugers ; so to shine. 

This seems plain enough, and I only remark that Davies 
could not possibly call Bacon the Muses' Bellamour or 
darling if he only knew the poetry of Bacon that this 
age recognises. Davies clearly knew (line 10) what 
Bacon called his " works of recreation." His last two 



276 BACON x\S A POET 

lines refer, I suppose, to an illuminated presentation 
copy.* 

But, to my mind, one of the best of evidences that 
Bacon was a poet comes from his own words, uttered on 
Nov. 17, 1595, by an amateur gentleman actor " that in 
Cambridge played Giraldy " in the presence of the Queen 
and a large gathering of court notables at one of the 
" Triumphs " that were so much the fashion in those 
days. Tobie Matthew, Bacon's lifelong friend, was also 
there, and took a prominent part in the proceedings. 
He took the character of the squire of the great Lord 
who presented the " Device," and who also had the con- 
temporary credit of composing the words, for it is always 
spoken of as " My Lord Essex's Device." But Tobie 
Matthew knew well enough who was the true author of 
the remarkable speeches it contained, and so do we now. 
Time reveals many mysteries, and has made known to 
us, by the discovery of a rough copy partly in Bacon's 
writing, that the Device of my Lord Essex, presented 
Nov. 17, 1595, was the work of that amazing genius, 
Francis Bacon. I have spoken somewhat of it in another 

* And here I would make the bold and novel suggestion that the famous 
Shake-speare's Sonnets were not called " sugred " because they were sweet as 
sugar, but because they were carefully prepared for presentation by an expert 
scrivener, and came into the hands of the " private friends " of the author with 
their manuscript characters heightened and made more brilliant by the art of 
the illuminator and gilder, and the ink " sugred " so as to shine on the scroll. 
I possess several German manuscript broad-sheets addressed to great personages 
c. 1600 to 1650 which have been sprinkled in this manner, and still retain their 
shiny brightness. I suppose the "sugring" was effected by something in the 
form of a pepper-caster or like the pounce-box of our ancestors. I am aware 
that Thomas Bancroft in 1639 wrote the following : 

To Shakespeare. 
Thy Muse's sugred dainties seem to us 
Like the fam'd apples of old Tantalus, 
For we (admiring) see and hear thy straines, 
But none I see or hear those sweet attaines. 

This of course tells against my suggestion, but Bancroft, like others down 
to the present day, may have taken the primary and more obvious meaning 
that sugred = sweet without thinking further about it, and without knowing 
that Francis Bacon had at least one "sugred" sonnet addressed to himself 
with '■ sugred yncke. " 



CONTEMPORARY EVIDENCE 277 

chapter on the Pallas-Shake-speare evidence, and to avoid 
repetition shall only deal with that part of the Device 
which proves to me so forcibly that Bacon was a poet 
par excellence. 

The scene is the " Tiltyard," and, after certain usual 
exercises have been successfully got through, Tobie 
Matthew, arrayed in the garb of an esquire to " my 
Lord," addresses the Queen, and asks leave to present 
to her Majesty three personages who wish to speak before 
her. They are said to be "a melancholy, dreaming 
Hermit, a mutinous, brain-sick Soldier, and a busy, tedious 
Secretary." They come forward in turn, and each makes 
his suitable speech. These speeches are the undoubted 
composition of Francis Bacon, though gossiping con- 
temporaries and letter-writers of the day, such as Rowland 
Whyte, all seem to be without the slightest inkling of such 
a notion. They are wonderful compositions, whether we 
look at the wise reflections, the fine imagery and striking 
similitudes in which they abound, or the clever way they 
put the case of Essex before the Queen. The speech 
that most of all shows Bacon the Great Poet is the one 
delivered by the " melancholy, dreaming Hermit." * He 
is advising that the gifts of fortune, the glories of war, 
and the diplomacy of statecraft are wearisome and 
dangerous compared with the solace, variety, and eternity 
of the gifts and fruits the Muses offer. He goes on : 

Let thy master, Squire, offer his services to the Muses. It is 
long since they received any into their court. They give alms 
continually at their gate, that many come to live upon ; but few 
have they ever admitted into their palace. There shall he find 
secrets not dangerous to know, sides and parties not factious to 
hold, precepts and commandments not penal to disobey. The 
gardens of love wherein he now playeth himself are fresh to-day 
and fading to-morrow, as the sun comforts them or is turned from 
them. But the gardens of the Muses keep the privilege of the 
golden age ; they ever flourish and are in league with time. The 

* Cf. the " melancholy Jaques " of the Shakespeare Plays, and the many 
other notices spread about the earlier dramas. " What sign is it when a man 
of great spirit grows melancholy ? " {Loves Labour's Lost, I. ii. 2). 



278 BACON AS A POET 

monuments of wit survive the monuments of power : the verses 
of a poet endure without a syllable lost, while states and empires 
pass many periods. Let him not think he shall [not] descend, 
for he is now upon a hill as a ship is mounted upon the ridge of 
a wave ; but that hill of the Muses is above tempests, always 
clear and calm ; a hill of the goodliest discovery that man can 
have being a prospect upon all the errors and wanderings of the 
present and former times. Yea, in some cliff* it leadeth the eye 
beyond the horizon of time, and giveth no obscure divinations of 
times to come." 

Do not we see here the thoughts and language of a 
supreme poet ? Have we not reproduced here in elegant 
and courtly phrase many reminiscences of the Sonnets, 
of Hamlet and of the early plays, of the Promus and a 
forecast of that cloudless Parnassian summit which 
adorned the title-page of another book a few years later ? 
We think of Sonnets lx. and cxxiii., and others where 
Time's devouring hand is scorned by the " ever-living " 
poet. We think of the " prophetic soul " of Hamlet and 
of Sonnet cvii. " dreaming on things to come," and we 
feel sure we are in the presence of a great and true poet, 
who, strangest of all literary marvels, let " this man " 
take his admirable " Devices," and " that man " his 
immortal Poems and Plays, and perhaps " another man " 
the contents of his carefully prepared commonplace books 
— content, when nearing the end of all earthly labours, 
to feel the inward assurance that, though only " in a 
despised weed," yet in all laborious earnestness he had 
sought the good of all men. He too it was, as I submit, 
subject to correction, who placed on the postern door of 
the Palatium Palladis in place of finis those characteristic 
words : 

NASCIMVR IN COMMVNE BONVM. 

But that is another story, belonging to my proofs reserved 
for a future volume, and is more conjectural than the 
present chapter, which I here conclude with the hope 

* Spedding reads "as from a cliff"? but perhaps cliff=clef. Cf. Troihis 
and Cressida, V, ii. ii. 



A MIRACLE? 379 

that I have given solid grounds for believing that Bacon 
had by many sure and infallible signs the genius and the 
language of a supreme poet. 

But while saying this, and hoping for its favourable 
acceptance, I would not for one moment deny the great 
difficulty there must be for any man, conversant with 
literary style, to be able to believe that the writer of the 
Novum Organum was also the writer of the immortal 
Plays, Poems, and Sonnets of Shakespeare. It would 
be believing in a " miracle " of literature, and miracles 
do not occur nowadays in any department of the universe. 
Professor Tyrrell, as we have seen, would rather believe 
all the fables of the Talmud and Alcoran, than believe 
this miracle of letters, and the Professor is D.Litt., and 
should be a good judge. I quite understand the Pro- 
fessor's position, for it was my own once, and it was only 
new and unexpected evidence that dislodged me. Even 
now I know of no instance like Bacon's marvellous change 
of style, manner, and identity in the whole literary history 
of mankind. It is a record literary marvel, unattained 
to in the past, and possibly unattainable in the future. 
As far as the gap or immense literary chasm between the 
two styles is concerned, I can think of but one incident 
in my personal experience at all reminding me of it, and 
that was the private ordinary conversation that Cora L. V. 
Tappan once entertained me with for a few minutes 
(by privilege) before she went off into a trance — and her 
so-called inspirational utterances or lectures to her 
audience while in that mediumistic state. The literary 
chasm was very wide between the two, and I remember 
I was much struck with it many years ago, before I had so 
much as heard of the Bacon theory. Outside my personal 
experience, the case of T. L. Harris seems to me sometimes 
slightly akin to the Bacon " marvel." When I compare his 
plain but eloquent sermons in England with the poetry 
and the prose of his remarkable series of privately-printed 
Californian books from Santa Rosa, I seem to see a gulf 
of difference almost as vast and deep as lies between 
Novum Organum and Hamlet or King Lear. What if 



28o BACON AS A POET 

Bacon had the mysterious power of assuming the person- 
aUty and utterances of the characters he put into his 
plays, even as some mediums have apparently a psychical 
power or gift of assuming the manner, voice, and know- 
ledge (?) of another person alive or dead ? Milton was 
" visited " in the early watches of the morning by thoughts 
and phrases and fancies of a loftier character than would 
occur to him in the ordinary working hours of the day ; 
and other similar examples could be adduced. I know 
of no scrap of evidence in Bacon's life that points this 
way, but, when there seem so few possible solutions that 
will float us out of the sea of difficulty, we are ready 
to catch at any straw. 



CHAPTER XV 

NEW EVIDENCE CONNECTING BACON WITH PALLAS 
AND THE HYPHENATED SHAKE-SPEARE 

In order that Baconians may get a hearing, two things 
must be proved either separately or in conjunction, as 
Professor A. R. Wallace very properly puts it : 

(i) It must be shown that Bacon wrote the Plays ; or 
(2) That Shakespeare could not possibly have written 
them. 
The first is the easier plan, for it is proverbially difficult 
to prove a negative, and I have chosen the easier plan ; 
butthegreat majority of anti-Shakespearians have chosen 
the harder task of proving that Shakespeare the Player 
could not be the author of the Shakespeare Plays, and 
inferentially could not be author of the Sonnets and 
Poems either, though generally these latter works are 
not much dwelt upon by Baconians. They, as a rule, 
manage their facts and arguments so as to stand or faU 
by the Plays. 

One of the latest and longest works on the second or 
harder plan, is a book just written (1902) by a Mr. W. H. 
Edwards, author of The Butterfiies of North America, A 
Voyage upon the River Amazon, &c. It has more than 
500 pages, and is entitled Shaksper not Shakespeare, with 
this motto on the title-page, " Let every tub stand on 
its own bottom." He begins his vast demonstration 
thus : 

" I propose to show that William Shaksper, often called 
Shakspere, could not have possibly written the works attributed 
to him under the name of William Shakespeare or Shake-speare. 
That the writer was a man who was a player, whose family name 
was ' Shaksper,' and whose name is appended to a deed and a 



282 PALLAS SHAKE-SPEARE 

mortgage 'Shaksper' and 'Shakspar,' and three times to a will 
'Shaksper' — of this there is no evidence, there is nothing but 
inference, conjecture, unwarranted assumption, and baseless 
(though general) reputation. During his life of fifty-two years 
none of his relatives, neighbours, or intimates, and none of his 
contemporaries, testified that this man was the author of these 
works." 

This is a vigorous beginning, and perhaps such all- 
embracing assertions would have been all the better for 
a little restraint and modification. However, he goes on 
to say : 

" Halliwell-Phillipps is the greatest authority on the subject 
of William Shakespeare by consent of all Shakespearians. His 
two large volumes comprise nine hundred pages, — and, after all, 
striking out some few elegiac verses or eulogies from the beginning 
of the successive folio editions of the Plays . . . there is not one 
line in the whole work that identifies William Shaksper as the 
author of the poetns and plays — not one line. We are made to 
know about him in every aspect but that of author, and there 
history is silent." 

Next he comes to his main point concerning Shaksper 
not being Shakespeare. 

" The name Shakespeare is quite another etymologically and 
orthographically from Shagsper or Shakspere, or Shaxpeyr or 
Shaxper. It is not in evidence that any author lived in the age 
of Elizabeth whose family and baptismal name was William 
Shakespeare or Shake-speare. There is no such historical man — 
no individual known who bore that name ; and the inference is 
fair that the name as printed upon certain poems and plays was 
a pseudonym, like that of ' Mark Twain,' or of 'George Eliot.'" 

A very great deal of what this writer says in his 
500 pages is, I am afraid, below criticism, for he is very 
careless and inaccurate in his assertions ; and R. L. 
Ashhurst, who is Vice-Dean of the Shakspere Society of 
Philadelphia, read before that Society (Jan. 23, 1901) 
" Some Remarks " on this book, and certainlj'' proves 
the author's sins of omission and commission and reckless 
assertion to be very numerous. But the remarkable 



THE HYPHEN 283 

thing in connection with the Vice-Dean's paper is that 
with regard to the spelling of the name " Shaksper not 
Shakespeare," which is one of the main points of the 
book, and its only title. Mr. Ashhurst begins by saying : 
" Tradition gives us as the author of these Plays William 
Shakspere — / care nothing about the spelling — an actor at 
the Globe Theatre, &c." I hardly remember a cooler 
instance of passing or slurring over the main point of the 
very book which the lecturer set himself to criticise. 

Personally, I think there is a good deal in this peculiar 
change into Shake-speare, and that it points to a " con- 
cealed personality " who was very different both by 
culture and position from the Stratford player. I believe 
that Shake-speare was a man who had sought "in a 
despised weed the good of all men," and had tried his 
best to shake a spear at Ignorance, which can hardly 
be said of the Stratford Shaksper, who brought up some 
of his family in such ignorance that they could not write 
their own names. 

Mr. Edwards further thinks that Shaksper the player 

went back to Stratford because " he liked the sort of 

people who lived there and the life they led, and would 

have been utterly out of place in a genteel or cultivated 

community." He adds : " Shaksper is never reported 

to have been seen with a book in his hand, or as having 

owned or read one, nor as seen writing poems or plays, 

or as having talked about such works, or as engaged in 

literary occupation of any description." He asks also 

how Shaksper could get a vocabulary of 15,000 to 20,000 

words, and quotes the following to show the meanness of 

the man : "In the Chamberlain's accounts of Stratford 

is found a charge, in 1614, for one quart of sack and one 

quart of claret wine, given to a preacher at the New 

Place (Shaksper's own house). What manner of man 

must he have been who would require the town to pay 

for the wine furnished to his guests ? What," he asks, 

" would a Virginian think of a man who charged a visiting 

preacher's whiskey to the county ? " And so he goes on 

for nearly 500 pages, often not altogether accurate in his 



284 PALLAS SHAKE-SPEARE 

assertions or inferences, but he writes forcibly enough for 
the man in the street, and sums up without mentioning 
Bacon, as he does not come into his hne of argument. 
This book is the last from America (excluding Mrs. GaUup), 
and that is the reason I have introduced it to my readers, 
so that they may hear le dernier mot from that quarter 
and the line taken. It contains most of the stock argu- 
ments against the possibility of the Stratford man writing 
the Plays, but is not equal in lucidity and arrangement 
to Judge Webb's Mystery of William Shakespeare, which 
is the latest and best on our side of the Atlantic. 

Before quite leaving the Shake-speare or lance- 
brandishing problem, I will bring forward some little dis- 
coveries of my own. I do not attach much importance 
to them, but there is this in their favour — they are per- 
fectly new in the way of evidence. 

Here is a sonnet addressed to Francis Bacon in 1595 
or 1596, which has never been in print before, and which 
was preserved by his brother Anthony. It is rather 
important for one word which may refer to the Shake- 
speare authorship. 

A Monsieur Franqois Bacon. 
Sonnet. 

Ce qu'inspire du Ciel, et plein d'affection 

Je comble si souvent ma bouche, et ma poitrine 
Du sacre Nom fameus de ta Royne divine 
Ses valeurs en sont cause et sa perfection 

Si ce siecle de fer si mainte Nation 

Ingratte a ses honneurs, n'avait I'ame yEmantine ; 
Ravis de ce beau Nom, qu'aus Graces je destine 
Avec eus nous I'aurions en admiration. 

Done (Baccon) s'il advient que ma Muse Ton vante 
Ce n'est pas qu'elle soit ou diserte, ou s^avante : 
Bien que vostre Pallas me rende mieus instruit 

C'est pource que mon Lut chant sa gloire sainte 
Ou qu'en ces vers nayfz son Image est emprainte : 
Ou que ta vertu claire en mon ombre reluit. 

— La Jessie. 

This sonnet, which is at the Lambeth Archiepiscopal 
Library, was overlooked both by Birch and Spedding, or 



FRENCH EVIDENCE 285 

perhaps, I should say, passed over by them as containing 
nothing of historical interest. However, for a certain 
reason I have thought it worth transcription. La Jessee, 
who signs as responsible for the sonnet, was not a lady, 
as one might suppose at first sight, but was, as I take it, 
Jean de la Jessee, who was secretaire de la chambre to that 
Francis, Duke of Anjou, who was so long a suitor for Queen 
Elizabeth (1570-1581). Most likely it was while Bacon 
was in France in the English ambassador's suite (1576- 
1579) that he made acquaintance with La Jessee. He 
was a man evidently fond of the Muses, for he wrote 
many sonnets to friends and patrons, published at Antwerp 
in 1582 in four volumes quarto. What the Duke of 
Anjou's private secretary seems to wish to convey to 
Bacon is this — that his own Muse, prolific as it was, was 
not a learned or eloquent one, but that Bacon's Pallas 
had taught it better how to speak. Now, Pallas was 
not one of the Muses, nor had Pallas anything to do with 
law ; what could Bacon have to do with her ? Well, she 
sprang fully armed from the head of Jove; she was a 
learned goddess ; she was Hastivibrans, a Shaker of the 
Spear or Lance ; and she had a vanquished serpent (Ignor- 
ance ?) at her feet in Greek sculpture. With the ancient 
Greeks she was looked upon as the protectress and pre- 
server of the state ; she was the personification of what 
the Romans called Prudentia Civilis, and what we call 
Political Science. Bacon set himself to be an adept at 
this. Can this partly explain why Bacon called himself 
Shake-speare ? 

La Jessee wrote both in French and Latin, and I find 
sonnets to Seigneur Pollet,* ambassadeur d'Angleterre, 
to the King of Navarre, and to Queen Elizabeth ; so 
we may conclude on several grounds that the Duke of 
Anjou's secretary was fairly acquainted with court life 
and court fashions in England. 

This French sonnet to Francois Bacon, from its position 
in the bound-up volumes of Anthony Bacon's MSS., seems 

* This was the Sir Amyas Paulet in whose train young Francis Bacon went 
to France for nearly three years (1576-1579). 



286 PALLAS SHAKE-SPEARE 

to have been written about 1595 or 1596, and at that date 
the famous Essays of Francis Bacon had not been pub- 
lished, nor had any hterary work of much significance 
been put forth by him, so the expression vostre Pallas 
does not seem appropriate, as nothing hke a Pallas fully 
armed had sprung from Bacon's great brain yet, as far 
as the world of letters knew. 

But while pondering on what La Jessee's reference to 
Bacon's Pallas [vostre Pallas) could possibly mean, I 
fortunately struck upon a clue to which I attach con- 
siderable importance, and if a right clue, it leads to the 
kev which will perhaps unlock the mystery of that 
hyphenated and strangely-spelled word Shake-speare, 
which is quite different from any of the player's usual 
signatures, and only appears hyphenated on certain title- 
pages and dedications and signatures to Poems {The 
Phoenix and the Turtle) in the prefatory matter by Ben 
Jonson and others of the first foUo, and in Willobie's Avisa, 
1594. The clue is this : Pallas is referred to in a remark- 
able paper, without heading, docket, or date, found in the 
Lambeth collection ; which paper is further proved by 
some notes and portions of the rough draft still extant 
in Bacon's handwriting to be of his composition. It is 
clearly a part of one of the Devices which Bacon was so 
clever and ready in contriving. It seems to have been 
a sequel to some former Device of the same kind, in which 
Philautia, the goddess of Self-Love, had been represented 
as addressing some persuasion to the Queen, and is in 
the form of a letter (in Bacon's handwriting, and with 
his notes for Essex written in the margin !) to the Queen. 
This letter was most likely intended to come into the 
Device at the point where the ambassadors introduce 
themselves by delivering it to the Queen. It is so im- 
portant for the solution of The Mystery of William Shake- 
speare, that I must quote it at length. 

"Excellent Queen, Making report to Pallas, upon whom 
Philautia depends,* of my last audience with your Majesty and of 

* Frustra sapit, qui sibimet sapit. 



AN ESSEX DEVICE 287 

the opposition I found by the feigning tongue of a disguised Squire, 
and also of the incUnation of countenance and ear which I dis- 
cerned in your Majesty rather towards my ground than to his 
voluntary, the Goddess allowed well of my endeavour and said no 
more at that time. But few days since she called me to her, and 
told me that my persuasions had done good,* yet that it was not 
amiss to refresh them. I attending in silence her furder pleasure, 
after a Httle pause putting her shield before her eyes as she useth 
when she studieth to resolve. Better (said she) raise the siege 
than send continual succours, and that may be done by stratagem. 
This, Philautia, shall you do. Address yourself to Erophilus. 
You know the rest : we shall see what answer or invention the 
Goddess of fools (so many times she will call Jupiter's fair 
daughter) will provide for him against your assailings. And then 
the alone Queen f (so she ever terms your Majesty) will see that 
she hath had Philautia's first offer, and that if she reject it, it will 
be received elsewhere to her disadvantage. And upon my humble 
reverence to depart she cleared her countenance, and said. The 
time makes for you. | I gladly received her instructions. Only 
because I had negotiated with your Majesty myself I would not 
vouchsafe to deal with an inferior in person : but I have put 
them in commission that your Majesty will see can very well 
acquit themselves ; and will at least make you sport, which 
Philautia for a vale desireth you to contrive out of all others' 
earnestj and so kisseth your serene hands, and rested, — Your 
Majesty's faithful remembrancer, Philautia." 

Then follows the beginning of the speech of the Hermit 
— a first draft only ; it was afterwards entirely rewritten, 
and is extant in another part of the same MS. volumes, 
viz., in the Gibson Papers, vol. v. No. 118. 

Now this rough draft of Bacon's composition was 
intended solely for the eyes of the Earl of Essex, who was 
the supposed author of the Device, and obtained apparently 
the whole credit for it from his contemporaries. Bacon's 
name seems quite kept out of our accounts of the Device, 

* That your Lordship knoweth whether the Queen have profited in 
Self-Love. 

t I pray God she be not too much alone, but it is a name of excellency 
and virginity. 

+ That your Lordship knoweth, and I in part, in regard of the Queen's 
unkind deaUng, which may persuade you to self-love. 



288 PALLAS SHAKESPEARE 

and unless these autograph MSS. had been preserved and 
discovered, we should never have been sure that these 
parts of the Device were of his work and not by Essex. 

Let us consider this important letter from Philautia 
to the Queen in Essex's Device of 1595 a little more in 
detail. Now at the very beginning of the letter or address 
we find that it is Pallas who is the real framer and 
originator of the advice to the Queen, and consequently 
Pallas stands for Bacon. Philautia depends upon him, 
and we may see in Bacon's marginal note for Essex's eye 
a semi-apology to the noble lord through the proverbial 
hint, Frustra sapit qui sihimet sa-pit, i.e. It is not always 
wisdom to trust to your own devices alone. Further on 
we are told of Pallas that when she resolveth doubtful 
points she puts her shield before her eyes, which rather 
reminds us of the thoughtful Francis sitting in his arm- 
chair and cogitating, with his uplifted arm supporting 
his head ; sic sedebat. Then the allusion to the Goddess 
of Fools, Jupiter's fair daughter, by whom I suppose 
Venus is meant, is more in the vein of Bacon than it is 
of the classic Pallas who uses the slighting expression. 
Bacon was strongly of the opinion of Publius Syrus that 
amare et sapere vix Deo conceditur, or, as he puts it in his 
Essay Of Love, " It is impossible to love and be wise," 
and elsewhere frequently, as well as in the Sonnets and 
Plays. Then we are told that Pallas-Bacon " ever terms " 
her Majesty Queen Elizabeth " the alone Queen," and 
that " it is a name of excellency and virginity." Again 
our thoughts go to that strange poem. The Phoenix and 
the Turtle, written and signed by William Shake-speare, 
where the best scholars are agreed that the Phoenix = 
Elizabeth and the Turtle = Essex, and we remember the 

Threnos : 

" Leaving no posterity — 
'Twas not their infirmity, 
It was married chastity." 

Also the bird, " On the sole Arabian Tree," and it looks 
as if Shake-speare might be the Pallas of the Essex Device. 
Moreover, the name Pallas was given (itto to irdWeiv ro 



THE SPEAR-SHAKER 289 

Bopv, that is, because she was wont to shake her speare as 
Servius the scholiast in Mneid, i. 43, tells us. She was pro- 
duced from Jove's head, because Wit or Intellect comes from 
the head, and she presided over the arts because nothing 
excels wit or wisdom in the supreme rule of all the arts. 

Thus Pallas, Bacon, and Shake-speare seem to be 
intimately connected with each other, and the easiest 
solution of the mystery is that they are all different 
names of one man. William Shake-speare first appears 
in Venus and Adonis (1593), and in Lucrece (1594), where 
Bacon shows his head. Pallas first appears in the Essex 
Device of 1595, where we know Bacon helped, but there 
was an earlier Essex Device in 1592, where Bacon also 
supplied speeches, and so Pallas may have appeared 
earlier and the account of her part in the proceedings 
may have been lost. Anyhow, we have not sufficient 
materials to decide whether the pseudonym Shake-speare 
was borrowed by Bacon from Shakspere the player, or 
from Pallas the spear-shaking Goddess of Wit, who was 
the representative of Bacon in early Devices prepared 
for the Queen. Which appellation was used first we 
cannot say, but we are justified, I think, in asserting 
that the remarkable fashion in which Pallas, Bacon, and 
Shake-speare are all mixed up and connected with the 
Devices of Essex, now known to be written by Bacon, 
and with the Poems and Plays attributed to William 
Shakspere, or Shacksper, of Stratford, all goes to prove 
that Pallas and Shake-speare were identical names for 
that one man Francis Bacon who showed " his head " in 
Lucrece, and gave us some peculiar autobiographical 
selections in Shake-speares Sonnets. 

I do not think that Baconians are at all acquainted 
with this little piece of Pallas-Shake-speare evidence, but 
it is further borne out by some evidence that they know 
thoroughly, and that is in Ben Jonson's famous lines 
before the beginning of the first folio, where he speaks 
of the " well-torned and true-filed lines " of the great poet : 

"In each of which he seems to shake a lance, 
As brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance." 

T 



290 SHAKESPEARE THE INSTRUMENT 

Many Baconians also make much of certain printers' 
head-pieces in the first foho and elsewhere, in which they 
see Wisdom under a mask shaking a Lance at Ignorance. 
"Why Bacon should use the name of Shakespeare for 
the signature of the dedications of the first and second 
heirs of his invention, while his own name and cipher 
was so designedly inserted in the second heir, Lucrece, 
we can only explain by the reason that he wished to 
conceal his own personality, but yet to keep a proof in 
the poem itself that it was really his. He had to take 
some mask, and he took Shake-speare, which would stand 
for Pallas as well as the Stratford man. There is just a 
possibility that he did not think of Shakspere the player 
at all at first in 1591 ; but in 1597, when scandal and 
treason were being attached to his name, he may then 
have seen how useful an instrument the man William 
Shakespere would be, both by name and position, for the 
purpose of withdrawing attention from himself and fixing 
it on the Johannes Factotum of the stage plays. This 
surmise is helped by the fact that Bacon says in one of 
his Essays (xlvii.) : "In choice of Instruments it is 
better to choose men of a plainer sort. . . . Use also 
such persons as affect the Business wherein they are 
employed, for that quickeneth much." * 

Anyhow, the peculiar form Shake-speare appears very 
early. In one of the earliest known praises of Shake- 
speare the name has the strange and suggestive hyphen. 
Lucrece was entered at Stationers' Hall 9th May 1594, 
and Willobie's Avisa was entered 3rd Sept. 1594. So 

* 1 may here say that this remark of Bacon seems a sufficient answer to 
what is called " the crucial question which Baconians habitually avoid." The 
orthodox party puts this boasted cri4x of theirs in the following terms : " How 
came it that Bacon, of mighty brain power and of universal knowledge, when 
seeking to conceal his prodigious authorship as a poet, chose for his counterfeit 
representative the ignorant William Shakespeare, whose weak pretence in the 
rSle would have at once been exposed and ridiculed? How is it possible to 
suppose that a man like Bacon could have been for a moment such a fool as 
thus to give himself away in public? Only a giant can wear giants' shoes. 
How therefore could Bacon have wrecked his own scheme by committing his 
shoes to the feet of the pigmy .Shakespeare ? " This is xiocrux. Shakespeare 
was just the Instrument for Bacon, and not such a pigmy after all. 



BACON THE SORCERER 291 

this praise of Shake-speare must have been worked into 
the A visa very shortly after Lucrece appeared. The 
inference is that the author of the Avisa was some one 
who took special interest in Lucrece and its author. 
What a pity he said so little. He signs himself Contraria 
Contrariis Vigilantms : Dormitanus, a possible key, but 
I can make nothing of it. I note, however, that A. M. 
(Anthony Munday ?) translated from the French in 1593 
The Defence of Contraries, and A. M. was mixed up in 
literary prefaces and other matters with the Bacons. 
Was this early notice of Shake-speare from Anthony 
Munday ? He would know about Pallas and Court 
Devices. 

Moreover, Bacon tells us in his Essays that the 
" monstrous Fable " of Jove " being delivered of Pallas 
Armed out of his Head . . . containeth a Secret of 
Empire ; how Kings are to make use of their Counsel 
of State." Now we know that Bacon when quite a 
young man in 1584-5, or at about the age of twenty- 
three, addressed a treatise to the Queen entitled Advice 
to Queen Elizabeth. This was taking the office of Pallas 
very early, and becoming one of the " Counsel of State " 
before being called to the office. This early work of 
Bacon's leads me to think that he assumed or received 
the appellation of Pallas before he adopted the literary 
disguise of Shake-speare, which is so nearly synonymous. 

We have no evidence to show that Bacon would be 
brought into any public connection with Shaksper the 
player from Stratford much before the Gesta Grayorum 
of 1594, when the players gave a " Comed}^ of Errors " 
at Gray's Inn, and there was so much confusion and 
crowding of the audience upon the stage, that the grand 
performance turned out a great failure. Bacon was a 
leading spirit at this function, although his name as usual 
is singularly kept in the background, and allusion is only 
made to a certain " sorcerer * or conjurer that was 
supposed to be the cause of that confused inconvenience," 
who is taken to be Bacon. As Venus and Adonis was 

* A side hit, perhaps, at Roger Bacon. 



292 THE '«GESTA GRAYORUM" 

signed William Shakespeare in 1593, Bacon and South- 
ampton, both members of Gray's Inn, would seem to 
have known the player before the Gesta Grayorum incident, 
and Bacon must have arranged in some way for the use 
of the player's name to cover such literary work as the 
rising lawyer of Gray's Inn wished to keep behind a 
screen. Pallas-Bacon who could not pass a jest then 
dubbed himself Shake-speare, and sometimes even more 
pointedly wrote himself down as the hyphenated Shake- 
speare, which certainly ought to have suggested Pallas 
to any University man. I have no doubt Meres knew it 
well enough. But I will not pursue this Pallas-Shake- 
speare question any further. It will be quite enough for 
my purpose if I have succeeded in rendering it highly 
probable that in many cases that magic name Shake-speare 
belongs to Pallas-Bacon rather than to Shaksper of 
Stratford. 

I have also discovered a large amount of curious 
evidence connecting Bacon with Pallas, and with some 
important Elizabethan books where no one has up to the 
present suspected his intervention. It is already in MS., 
but is far too voluminous to add to the present work ; 
but if my arguments and views so far meet with a favour- 
able acceptance, I shall venture to offer in a small sepa- 
rate volume these new, and to me most unexpected, 
revelations. 



CHAPTER XVI 

SOME NOTABLE MEGALOMANIC FEATURES IN THE 
CHARACTER OF FRANCIS BACON 

Another favourite argument against the Bacon theory 
is, that Bacon had not time to write the Plays of Shake- 
speare even if he had the abihty. This argument will 
hardly stand against the known facts of Bacon's life. 
He said himself, and he had a right to his boast, " though 
the world hath taken my talent from me, yet God's talent 
I put to use." As Professor John Nichol says : 

" An activity so unparalleled neither the cares of office, nor 
illness, nor vexation of spirit, nor the shadow of disgrace, or of 
age, could impede. His work as a lawyer and statesman would 
have filled a life had not his labours as a philosopher and man 
of letters been sufficient to adorn it. With an energy like that 
of Scott after his ruin, he set himself to add fresh tiers to his 
enduring monument." 

During the decade 1580 to 1590 we do not know very 
much how he spent his spare time, and first and last he 
must have had a great deal of time to himself in these 
years. He showed himself an amateur and youthful 
Pallas in giving counsel of state to Queen Elizabeth in 
his letter of advice, and even as early as this " his Pallas " 
would put her shield before her face and consider the 
state of Europe and the national policy of England, and 
the religious controversies of the kingdom. I would 
suggest that he occupied his spare time in filling many 
commonplace books with collections made in the course 
of his reading ; jottings, examples, similes, phrases, &c., 
which he laid as a kind of foundation for the literary 
edifices he was afterwards to build, or gathered together 



294 BACON'S VAST SELF-CONFIDENCE 

in a storehouse whence they could afterwards be drawn 
forth to meet his requirements. The Promus is one of 
these which has been fortunatel}^ preserved ; there is 
every reason to beUeve he had others as well. Some- 
times I think that part of these collections got incorporated 
in some way in the Palladis Tamia of Francis Meres, and 
in the Palladis Palatium of William M^rednot ; but we 
are not likely to get behind the scenes after this long 
interval of time. Anyhow, we may safely say that the 
great Francis was no drone at any period of his life. He 
was too much of a megalomane to be ever inactive, especi- 
ally in his mind, which was so full of grand projects from 
his earliest days. 

He felt himself to be the Pallas of the age, sprung 
from the brain of Jove, and equipped for a champion 
against ignorance, and the defender and adviser, by his 
well-conceived counsel, of the commonwealth and its 
policy. Like most great men he thoroughly believed in 
himself, in his powers and in his projects — all he wanted 
to make them effective was money and position ; they 
were the sinews of war to him in his philanthropic designs 
to get the mastery over Nature in the interests of Man, 
and he damaged his fair fame in the attempt to procure 
these necessary adjuncts. 

In spite of constant failure, he never lost his belief 
in himself. He thought he could win the Queen for this 
man, or for that man, or for himself ; he thought he could 
persuade Cecil, and he looked forward to the time when 
he should be a better man than Coke, his constant enemy. 
No failure seemed to discourage him — the true sign of a 
megalomane. His Pallas was always ready to advise any 
great state personage, or to write letters to or for such 
personages, or to write letters to Kings and Queens, or 
to devise communications that might most likely come 
to their knowledge. He seemed always sanguine and 
confident, and when the great fall came, nothing, as Ben 
Jonson says, could diminish his true greatness, for that 
" could never fail him." He was magnificent in nearly 
all his ways and projects — magnificent in his expenditure 



BACON'S SELF-ASSERTION 295 

and love of show, in his marriage-robes of imperial purple 
from head to foot, in his Greatest Birth of Time, his first 
work — magnificent in his own estimation of his later 
philosophical works, which, as he told King James in the 
preface, had in them that which was " fixed " and 
" eternal " — a striking echo, as it seems to me, of those 
magnificent and magniloquent lines of the Shake-speare 
Sonnets written in the passionate fervour of earlier days : 

" But thy eternal summer shall not fade, 
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st ; 
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade 
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st : 

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see. 
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." 

—Sonnei XVIII. 

And again : 

" Nor marble, nor the gilded monuments 
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme. 

Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn 

The living record of your memory. 
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity 

Shall you pace forth ; your praise shall still find room, 

Even in the eyes of all posterity 

That wear this world out to the ending doom. 
So, till the judgment that yourself arise, 
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes." 

And again in Sonnet cxiv. : 

" O, 'tis the first ; 'tis flattery in my seeing, 
And my qreat mind most kingly drinks it up." 

Surely such magnificent self-assertion is very un- 
common in literature, and, so to speak, marks out a man 
from his fellows. I know Elizabethan sonneteers often 
claimed eternity of fame, but never in such lofty phrase 
as this. But this was Bacon's style exactly ; he had 
the " 'Ercles vein " if any man ever had. As Dean Church 
says of him : " He never affected to conceal from himself 
his superiority to other men in his aims and in the grasp 
of his intelligence." Look too at the magisterial and 



296 BACON'S MAGNIFICENCE 

almost almighty manner in which he begins one of his 
works : Francis of Verulam thought thus, and such is the 
method which he within himself pursued, which he thought 
it concerned both the living and posterity to become acquainted 
with. Surely here is the writer of the magniiical Sonnets. 
Surely such self-confidence as we find in the Sonnets 
cannot be the work or utterance of the man of Stratford, 
or we should have heard more of the Poet-ape asserting 
himself in the world of letters, and building a niche for 
himself in the Temple of Fame. Would a man with such 
a consciousness of eternal superiority over his fellows 
desert, in the early ripeness of his career, the very stage 
and theatre of his triumphs to hide himself away in the 
commonplace society of Stratford, to brew beer and to 
lend money ? No ; a man with such an opinion of his 
own merits would have looked well after the recognition 
of them, both in the present and in the future, as did 
that magnificent megalomane Francis Bacon, both in youth 
and maturity. 

Consider Francis Bacon on the day of his wedding. 
He was indeed a great man then — if not bom in the 
"purple " he was married in it. This is what a contem- 
porary letter says : 

" Sir Francis Bacon was married yesterday to his young wench 
in Maribone Chapel. He was clad from top to toe in purple, and 
hath made himself and his wife such store of fine raiments of 
cloth of silver and gold that it draws deep into her portion. . . . 
His chief guests were the three knights. Cope, Hicks, and 
Beeston ; and upon this conceit (as he said himself) that since he 
could not have my Lord of Salisbury in person, which he wished, 
he would have him at least in his representative body." * 

Compare this with the more modern description by 
Hepworth Dixon : 

" Feathers and lace light up the rooms in the Strand. Cecil 
has been warmly urged to come over from Salisbury House. 
Three of his gentlemen. Sir Walter Cope, Sir Baptist Hicks, and 

* Carleton to Chamberlain, nth April 1606; Domestic Papers, James I., 
1606. 



HEPWORTH DIXON'S VIEW! 297 

Sir Hugh Beeston, hard drinkers and men about town, strut over 
in his stead, flaunting in their swords and plumes ; yet the pro- 
digal bridegroom, sumptuous in his tastes as in his genius, clad 
in a suit of Genoese velvet, purple from cap to shoe, outbraves 
them all ; the bride, too, is richly dight, her whole dowry seeming 
to be piled up on her in cloth of silver and ornaments of gold." 

Here we have an amusing specimen of what the 
joumahstic spirit can produce ex nihilo, for Carleton's 
letter above is the only source of information. But even 
a journalist should be right in his names, and should not 
libel people gratuitously. It was Sir Michael Hicks, not 
Sir Baptist Hicks, who was at the wedding, and when 
Mr. Hepworth Dixon says that Cope, Hicks, and Beeston 
were " hard drinkers and men about town," it is probably 
" a mere development of the fact that he knew them to 
have been once the chief guests at a wedding dinner, and 
knew no more," as Mr. Spedding humorously remarks. 

Would that other megalomanes could have adorned 
their verses with such beauties, and their philosophies 
with such shrewd solidity as did that magnificent " Ueber- 
mensch,^^ Francis Bacon. 

The more I ponder over what I read of Francis Bacon's 
life and character, and compare it with what is known 
of the life and character of William Shakespeare, the 
more I feel what a tremendous miracle it would be for 
Shakespeare to have written the Plays and Poems, and 
how natural and congruous it seems that they should 
have proceeded in all their world-wide glories from that 
magnificent and universal genius, the philosopher of 
Gorhambury. To use a vulgarised adjective, Bacon was 
" immense " in most things. Consider his far-reaching in- 
tellectual aspirations ! He had determined at the outset 
of his career "to take all learning for his province," as 
he told his uncle Burghley with that absence of all mock- 
modesty which is so characteristic of the man who is not 
ignorant of his own parts. And what is more, he justified, 
as I contend, his boastful assertion in those immortal 
Plays, where we seem to see, in every subject mentioned, 



298 GOOD WORK NEEDS GOOD TOOLS 

the master-hand of an encyclopaedic and universal 
genius. 

But the best workmen require a good supply of suitable 
tools, and cannot be expected to produce good results 
without them. The genius of Pheidias would never have 
chiselled into divine majesty the chrys-elephantine Jove, 
nor Gibbon have perfected his monumental history without 
these necessary helps. Now, we are asked to believe 
that the player from Stratford executed his immortal 
work almost without any tools, or, at least, with only a 
few to start with which he procured when a boy at the 
Stratford grammar-school, and was never afterwards, as 
far as we know from the uneventful and commonplace 
history of his life, able to give the proper time to main- 
tain them in good working order at home, nor yet to go 
to the manufacturers, that is to say, the libraries, to 
get them properly polished and up-to-date. In fact, 
such places as libraries were few and far between in 
Elizabethan days, and the great Oxford emporium was 
only just being started with a new stock by Sir Thomas 
Bodley. 

It seems thus that Shakespeare the player was badly 
handicapped in the race for Fame. But how was it with 
his great competitor, " My young Lord-Keeper " ? What 
choice of tools had he ? Why, from the age of eighteen 
onwards he had, so to speak, his lodgings " over a tool- 
shop." He could walk into Gray's Inn Library without 
so much as putting on his beaver, and before that, his 
father had well supplied him at home, and also sent him 
betimes to that excellent Cambridge shop at the sign of 
" The Trinity." So here again there is no comparison 
between the two ; one is competent for the most finished 
work, the other seems wellnigh disqualified ; for, in 
spite of his two-hundred years' reputation of being the 
greatest literary workman of his own or any age, he is 
not known to have possessed a single literary tool, except 
perhaps a Florio's Montaigne, in which some one else 
apparently scribbled his name ; and he is never known to 
have frequented the emporia where the best tools were kept. 



BACON'S RAPID WORK 299 

Finally, as against those critics who dwell so much on 
the argument that " Bacon had not time to write the 
Shakespeare Plays even if he had the ability," I would 
add, to the considerations already mentioned, Bacon's 
own remark in his C agitata et Visa. He says, " He finds 
in his own experience that the art of inventing grows by 
invention itself ; " that is, it becomes gradually easier to 
produce works of invention of a literary kind (for of these 
he is speaking) after a little practice. Indeed, when 
Bacon was well set I am inclined to think he would not 
have much more trouble in writing one of his immortal 
Plays, than an able critic to-day in preparing a review 
for one of the Quarterlies. 

Consider, too, the large quantity of matter in the 
Plays which is really only North's Plutarch and Holinshed 
turned into blank verse. With Bacon's peculiar facility 
in improving other people's language almost spontaneously, 
a fact for which Rawley vouches — and Rawley, his private 
chaplain and executor, should know this better than any 
one else — he would take very little time in providing the 
matter for even a five-act play, and he had always plenty 
of people about him, servants and scriveners, who would 
save him much time and trouble in transcription. But 
Rawley's own words settle this matter : " With what 
sufficiency he wrote let the world judge ; with what 
celerity he wrote them (his works) I can the best testify." 

We have no difficulty in deciding to which of the 
two parties in the Church of England Bacon belonged in 
1590 and earlier. He was an Anglican, and of that party 
to which Whitgift the Archbishop of Canterbury belonged, 
who indeed almost made and sustained it as against the 
Puritans on one side and the Roman Catholics with 
Spanish and Papal leanings on the other. Lady Anne 
Bacon makes this evident to us, for she writes to her 
son Anthony when in 1590 he was returning home from 
his long residence abroad, and urges him to testify his 
adherence to those who " profess the true religion of 
Christ " (the Puritans, she means), and to do so boldly 
and openly. She adds in Latin, I suppose so that the 



300 GRAND LANGUAGE 

servants should not by chance see the letter lying about, 
and it should thus reach the ears of Francis, in hoc noli 
adhibere fratrem tuum ad consilium aid exemplum, sed plus 
dehinc ; and then goes on to write in Greek that Arch- 
bishop Whitgift was the destruction of the English Church. 
Thus it is pretty clear that Pallas-Shakespeare-Bacon was 
no Puritan, but a strong Anglican of Whitgift's view of 
thinking ; and hence we can better explain the licensing 
of such a book as Venus and Adonis by the Archbishop's 
own signature. Whitgift would pass over in Bacon, his 
rising pupil, what he would prohibit in men of a different 
stamp ; for I assume that Bacon in some way did see 
his first two long poems through the press, for they have 
every appearance of being carefully revised by the author, 
and are thus in a very different position from the quarto 
plays, which are as a rule most carelessly printed, and 
full of such blunders as might be expected in pirated 
copies. 

Almost directly after Venus and Adonis had appeared 
we hear of Francis Bacon at the age of thirty-four making 
his very tardy appearance in his first pleading in the 
King's Bench, and there was considerable excitement and 
expectation among his friends as to the impression he 
would make. Fortunately we are able to know the 
result, since a young lawyer of Gray's Inn who was 
present at one of these pleadings wrote an account of it 
to Anthony Bacon. This letter I claim as important 
evidence in the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, for it 
tells us that a marked feature of the new pleader was 
" the unusual words wherewith he had spangled his 
speech." In fact, some sentences were almost too obscure 
for the capacities of his hearers, as it appeared to the 
young lawyer, but he ended his letter facetiously by 
remarking that if it please her Majesty to add deeds to 
words " the Bacon may be too hard for the Cook ! " 

Now here we have Francis Bacon exhibiting in his 
own person one of the most marked characteristics of 
the Shakespeare Plays before the great majority of them 
were written — I mean the enormous vocabulary and the 



UNIQUE WORDS 301 

many unusual and unique words which are found in the 
Plays. It has always been a difficulty, indeed almost a 
miracle, that the Stratford provincial should command 
such a wonderful stock of words ; and when we find that 
Bacon was the very man who, even when comparatively 
young, astonished his learned contemporaries by this 
identical characteristic, it certainly seems a piece of 
evidence strongly in Bacon's favour as to the disputed 
authorship. And if any one cares to look further into 
some of the many unusual words in the works attributed 
to Shakespeare the player, they will be greatly surprised. 
I will put down only a few ; they are all words used for 
the first time in the history of our language, many of 
them have never been used a second time, and they are 
all invented and used in a strict and proper scholarlike 
manner. 

Antre, from Lat. antnim, a cave. — Othello^ i. 3. 

Cadent, from Lat. cadere, to fall. — Lear, i. 4. 

Captious, from capere, to receive. 

" Yet, in this captious and intenible sieve, 
I still pour in the waters of my love." 

—Alls Well, i. 3. 

Circummure, to wall round. — Measure for Measure, iv, i. 
Conspectuities, from cotispicere, to behold. 

" What harm can your bisson conspectuities glean out of this 
character ? " 

— Coriolanns, ii. i. 

I doubt whether any question addressed to the court 
in Bacon's maiden speeches reached quite so high a level 
as this last : 

Empiricutic, from the Greek, meaning tentative. 
" The most sovereign prescription in Galen is but empiricutic." 

And without going on alphabetically any further, let 
us take but two more, incarnadine and necessary. What 
lover of Shakespeare is there who does not know that 
wondrous line : 

" The multitudinous seas incarnadine." 

— Macbeth, ii. 2. 



302 THE "NECESSARY CAT" 

Now incarnadine is coined by the writer out of Low Latin 
or some Romance language, and means, according to 
derivation, tinged with the colour of flesh. And necessary 
is used of a cat : 

" A harmless, necessary cat." 

—As You Like //, iii. 3. 

But why is a cat " necessary " ? Because it is a domestic 
animal, and the Latin word necessarius means anything 
or anybody connected with one's household, and so 
familiar, domestic. But would Shakespeare at any 
period of his life be likely to call his wife's cat either at 
Shottery, or at their grander quarters in New Place, a 
" necessary cat " ? 

These instances, like the identities and the parallelisms, 
can be almost indefinitely multiplied, and are to be found 
in great numbers in Baconian books, especially those of 
Mrs. Pott and Mr. Edwin Reed. I think they are good 
items of evidence, better than the identities and parallel- 
isms, but they need not be alluded to any further here, 
as Mr. Reed has done them ample justice. 

It is known to all acquainted with Bacon's philo- 
sophical works that he separated them into two classes : 
(i) Those destined to be " publike." 
(2) Those destined to be " traditionary." 
This word " traditionary " comes from an original MS. 
in Bacon's own handwriting, entitled Valerius Terminus, 
which contained fragments of a greater work he had 
proposed to write, and was in fact the earliest type of the 
Instauratio. The title-page gives a list of twelve frag- 
ments, and then we have : 

"13. The first chapter of [the] a booke of the same argu- 
ment wrytten in Latine and destined [for] to be [traditionary] 
separate and not publike." 

The words in brackets are crossed out in the MS., and 
the succeeding words placed in their stead. 

There is this singular fact to record about Bacon, 
that from the very first he showed himself unwilling to 



AN ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHER 303 

allow his peculiar method in Philosophy to be generally 
known. Like some of the ancient philosophers, he wished 
it to be handed down only ad filios (his intellectual sons), 
only to those who were willing to receive it and fit to 
understand it. The exposition of his new method or 
instrument he wished to be esoteric, and to make its way 
quietly, without contention or vulgar discussion, into the 
minds that could receive it — a select audience, acquainted 
with the Latin tongue in whiv^h it was to be presented, 
for Bacon thought this universal tongue of the learned 
would alone endure to distant posterities. It does not 
seem that he was jealous of his great secret, or that he 
wished to exclude the vulgar from the knowledge of it, 
but rather that it was too abstruse to be handled suc- 
cessfully by any but the fit and few. All preparatory 
knowledge tending to make plain the way to understand 
the new method Bacon wished to be widely spread and 
propagated among all classes. Here he would much 
rather find auditors than exclude them ; and some 
curious suggestive evidence of this is known to me, 
where it seems probable that Bacon used other names 
to conceal his own. He wanted his great views to be 
received and understood, but not by means of con- 
tentious arguments but rather by chalking the door of 
those where he was to be received in a peaceful way, 
without threat of personal violence or entry by force. 
This curious simile, which he borrowed from one of the 
Borgias, is several times referred to by Bacon, and was 
clearly a favourite way of expressing his propaganda. 
He was willing to efface himself, if only the world would 
become able to accept his method and profit by it. 

And as in Philosophy, so in the Devices and Masques 
he kept himself in the background, and allowed others 
to take the credit which solely or chiefly belonged to 
him. He did not put his name to any literary work till 
he was nearly forty years old. 

But what I chiefly wish to draw attention to here is 
the curious self-effacement in literary matters of one 
whose organ of self-esteem was so highly developed. 



304 LITERARY RESERVE 

That is one point, and the other is the two classes of 
writing or teaching admittedly used by him as occasion 
required. 

Bacon had also, as I believe, and as this book is written 
to show, a third class of writings, viz. : 

(3) Those destined by himself to go to posterity by 
another name, but still bearing the mark, the deep brand 
of his own vocabulary, his own scholarship, and his own 
philosophy — a brand, too, that none of the barber- 
surgeons of the press, the stage, or the higher criticism 
can ever erase, if they try till doomsday. Besides this 
unmistakable brand, one of the works that went to 
posterity by another name, I mean Lucrece, certainly 
bore on its very front his own name as in his early days 
he signed it ; a " moiety " of his fuller name, but quite 
enough to show his head where men could prove it. 

I can also show plainly from Bacon's own words that 
he held the unusual view that a man's writings should 
follow the man after he was dead, and that it was to 
some extent an " untimely anticipation " to let the world 
have them while he was alive. This opinion of this is 
given in a letter he wrote to his friend Dr. Andrewes, 
Bishop of Winchester, on the subject of his Essays : 

" As for my Essays, and some other particulars of that nature, 
(Poems? Plays?) I count them but as the recreation of my 
other studies, and in that sort purpose to continue them . . . 
But I account the use that a man should seek of the publishing 
of his own writings before his death to be but an untimely 
anticipation of that which is proper to follow a man, and not go 
along with him." 

Whoever else among great and ambitious men held 
this strange doctrine of literary reserve ? Whoever else 
among men of illustrious intellect did thus efface, as did 
Bacon, the brightest part of a glorious mind from the 
praise and acknowledgment of succeeding generations ? 
Whoever else in all history allowed, of set purpose, the 
lofty pedestal on which he had every right to take his 
stand to be possessed by a money-grubbing, facetious 



LITERARY MIRACLES 305 

actor-manager whose vocabulary could not have been 
mentioned in the same breath with his own, to say nothing 
of much more significant differences. 

It is this " literary miracle " that makes it so hard 
for people to give up the traditional Shakespeare. But 
surely when we have Bacon's own words in his letter 
above, and also that memorable testamentary device of 
his whereby he left his name and memory to " the next 
ages," we should not allow an apparent miracle to pre- 
judice our examination of a literary problem. Speak- 
ing loosely, there are about as many miracles on one side 
of the problem as on the other, for if Bacon really com- 
posed this third class of writings contained in the wonderful 
first folio, in Lucrece, in the Sonnets and elsewhere, and 
passed them over in complete silence when he died — 
that is undoubtedly a literary miracle. But if the player 
from Stratford wrote them, and also passed them over 
in complete silence when he made his will and left his 
second-best bedstead to his wife — that is also surely a 
literary miracle as well ; and so 

" Even as one heat another heat expels, 
Or as one nail by strength drives out another," 

we may cancel the first miracle by the second and proceed 
to judgment unaffected by either. 

And now, putting aside the disturbing miraculous 
element, what are we to say about the proof from Lucrece ? 
Did Bacon really show his head there, both at the be- 
ginning and at the end ? Did he sign that fine poem 
cryptogrammatically on its first page and its last and 
let the real author lie there latent, while the letters of 
the name William Shakespeare were blazoned to the 
world at full length at the foot of the dedication ? Let 
us not waste time by arguing whether it was likely or 
not — the signature is there, and we are to pronounce upon 
it. Is it an intricate arithmetical, multi-literal cr3^pto- 
gram like Donnelly's, of which the man in the street can 
make neither head nor tail ? Certainly not ; a man 
need not be a Sherlock Holmes to detect both the head 
and tail of this evidence. And slight and foolish as it 

u 



3o6 VESTIBULE AND BACK DOOR 

may seem to some, it is a point of prime importance, for 
if we accept this evidence as sufficient to show that 
Francis Bacon certainly wrote Lucrece, unless he bribed 
Shakespeare to hide his initials and full name at the 
beginning and end, then the whole controversy is practi- 
cally settled. For whoever wrote Lucrece wrote Venus 
and Adonis, and whoever wrote that poem wrote the 
Sonnets and the earlier plays ; for Love's Labour'' s Lost, 
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, A Midsummer Nighfs 
Dream, and Romeo and Juliet are so intimately connected 
by parallel passages with the Sonnets, that no atom of 
doubt remains that he who wrote the Sonnets wrote also 
these plays ; and if these earlier plays, why not parts 
of the later plays also, for there are evident traces of 
the same immortal genius in them all, as they have been 
handed down to us in their last revised and first collected 
edition — the folio of 1623. Moreover, if Shakespeare 
really wrote Lucrece, why on earth should Francis Bacon 
want to hide his name at the beginning or end ? These 
are just the places where Bacon would hide his name if 
he had written Lucrece himself. I admit that to the 
fullest, but that is a very different statement, and makes 
strongly for my contention. 

Bacon gives us this hint himself. He calls the Fore- 
word or Preface of a book its " Vestibule," and the 
Conclusion or Epilogue he calls its " Back Door," and 
remarks that many matters may be properly discussed 
and mentioned in these parts of a book which could not 
be fitly grappled with in the body of the work ; just as 
a man may say and do many things at the front door 
or at the back door which he would not permit inside 
the house. Now certainly the front and back doors have 
been used in Lucrece, and I think Bacon is the man who 
used them — for himself and posterity solely — leaving the 
dedication of the Poem to be signed by Your Lordships 
in all duety William Shakespeare. 



CHAPTER XVII 

CERTAIN UNUSUAL CIRCUMSTANCES AND HINTS CON- 
NECTED WITH THE POEMS AND PLAYS OF WILLIAM 
SHAKESPEARE 

It is worthy of remark that none of Shakespeare's Plays 
is dedicated to any person or patron. The Poems 
dedicated to Southampton seem the sole exception. They 
were the first works to which the name of Shake-speare 
was given, andafterwards no other Maecenas was addressed. 
The general custom of those days was very much in 
favour of dedications, and gross flattery and ridiculous 
obsequiousness abounded everywhere in such productions. 
Neither player nor poet felt it below his dignity to have 
recourse to fulsome dedications, generally with the view 
to enrich his pocket with the gifts from his patron. 

But Bacon has left plainly on record that he was 
strongly against this degradation of learning. He says : 

"The gross and palpable flattery whereunto many (not 
unlearned) have abased and abused their wits and pens, turning 
(as Du Bartas saith) Hecuba into Helena and Faustina into 
Lucretia, hath most diminished the price and estimation oflearning. 
Neither is the moral [i.e. customary] dedications of books and 
writings, as to patrons, to be commended : for that books (such 
as are worthy the name of books) ought to have no patrons but 
truth and reason ; and the ancient custom was to dedicate them 
only to private and equal friends, or to intitle the books with 
their names ; or if to kings and great persons it was to some 
such as the argument of the book was fit and proper for." * 

This we see Bacon carried out in practice in his poems 
of Venus and Adojtis and Lucrece ; for Southampton was 
a private friend, and his " sugred sonnets " were for his 

I * Advancement 0/ Learftm§', iii. 281, ed. Spedding. 

307 



3o8 EARLY DAYS 

" private friends," and the poems bore the name of the 
friend. 

Now we should hke to know more about young Francis 
Bacon's private friends when he was at Gray's Inn in his 
early days, the kind of " set " he was connected with, 
and how he spent his evenings. There can be no doubt 
that he was a close student, and kept to himself and to 
his books very much. As we should say at Cambridge, 
" his oak was often sported " ; and the very few notices 
we have of Bacon's early London days point in that 
direction. But there were fast young lawyers about 
town in those Elizabethan times. That rare tract by 
Thomas Middleton, entitled Father Hubburd's Tales, tells 
us what a rich young squire from the country ought to 
do on coming to town : 

" He must acquaint himself with many gallants of the Innes 
of Court, and keep rank with those that spend most ; . . . after 
dinner he must venture beyond sea, that is, in a choise paire of 
Noble-mens Oares to the Bankside where he must sit out the 
breaking up of a Comedie, or the first Cut of a Tragedie, or 
rather (if his humour so serve him) to call in at the Black-fryers, 
where he should see a neast of Boyes, able to ravish a man." 

Is it likely that Francis Bacon ever spent his evenings 
in this dissipated way ? I think so ; and remembering 
what Aubrey said his humour was, I have no doubt it 
sometimes served him to call in at the Blackfriars and 
see the young boy-actors in their nest. Do we not 
remember that curious expression in Hamlet, an " aery 
of children, little eyases " ? That referred to boy-actors, 
and " aery " was the word for a nest of hawks, and the 
" eyases " were the young birds in it. So perhaps Bacon 
had watched them with an eye of interest, for it is Bacon 
and not Shakespeare who is so frequently referring to 
the aristocratic pursuit of hawking and using its technical 
terms in the Shakespeare Plays ; at least that is our 
view, as it also is that Bacon was one of the two friends 
who were the Damon and Pythias of the Bankside and 
had " one drab " between them. 



AT GRAY'S INN 309 

Lady Anne had great fears about her son Francis, 
and hnited pretty plainly in her letters to Anthony what 
her opinion was. She thought he was averse to taking 
good advice, and was producing his " own early dis- 
credit " ; and this was in 1593, when Francis was at the 
discreet age of thirty-two. So, though we may assume 
that Francis was a devoted student and thinker in the 
days of his youth, we must not, I think, also assume 
that he was a perfect Joseph in matters of the moral 
law. Noscitur a sociis is a good rule in such matters, 
and as Perez, Essex, Southampton, and Pembroke were all 
far from being Sir Galahads, it may be fairly assumed that 
Francis Bacon, the intimate companion of such pleasure- 
loving grandees, was not an unlikely person to figure in 
those strange adventures that are depicted to us so dimly 
in the Sonnets. 

He was certainly a much more likely person for the 
part than William Shakespeare, and although the Bacon 
of middle and later life was apparently a man of serious, 
learned, and philosophic tastes, we should not therefore 
assume that in his youth he must have been a kind of 
Elizabethan John Stuart Mill — a mere " book in breeches," 
as Mill's enemies called him. We may far more justly 
assume that his three years in France after he left college 
were spent in the fashionable pleasures that were usual 
with gay young men of position ; and that though a 
lover of learning, he was neither a hermit nor a saint, 
but was qualifying himself by his social surroundings for 
the production of that wonderful original play Love's 
Labour^s Lost, which I cannot help thinking was his first 
dramatic sketch, and perhaps partly autobiographical 
as well. 

Another very singular circumstance connected with 
William Shakespeare is, that when he died there were no 
epicedia or lacrymce, or any of the laudatory laments that 
were wont to be bestowed on the illustrious dead. The 
greatest genius of the age left the world without a word 
of comment for good or ill from any one. Surely there 
is something mysterious here. It is not even known for 



310 AN OVIDIAN DOMINO 

certain when his memorial tomb in Stratford Church was 
erected. There is no mention of it until the issue of the 
first folio in 1623, and it and its inscriptions may have 
been only then recently erected in view of the outcoming 
folio edition of his Plays. 

Such a great and popular dramatist deserved some 
notice from his contemporaries when he left the great 
theatre of the world for ever ; — why then this singular 
conspiracy of silence ? Was it because he was shrewdly 
suspected of being only a successful broker of other men's 
plays, and therefore the less said the better ? But just 
now we are more concerned with the early days of 
Bacon than with the last days of Shakespeare, so we 
will consider him for a moment under his Ovidian 
domino, as I believe Ben Jonson depicted him in the 
Poetaster. 

Bacon, like Milton, began by being a lover of Ovid. 
The " first heire " of his invention in poetry was of Ovidian 
descent, and of the " Amorous Latin " school. There was 
no slur on a man's breeding because he wrote poems. On 
the contrary, it was a proof of cultured and courtly wit. 
The aristocratic young bloods tried their hands at it — 
Pembroke, Essex, and others ; and to be able to write 
verses for the maids of honour to sing to their virginals 
was in a gaUant's favour. It was play-writing that was 
decreed to be impossible for a courtly gallant. So Bacon, 
who from his earliest days always aimed at the greatest 
and highest " births of time," did not begin with any 
short lyrics, but attempted a grand poem on an Ovidian 
subject, and enriched by such " native wood-notes wild " 
as never came from Ovid's lips. Who would have thought 
that Bacon, beginning so, should become within a few 
years the author of Hamlet ? What a contrast, what a 
gulf between the two ! It seems almost incredible that 
both should come from the same pen ; but in Venus and 
Adonis we see the author of Hamlet when young, we see 
there the Bacon of the Sonnets and of the Master-Mistress 
of his passion. And in Hamlet we see the same person- 
ality older and wiser, having passed through a dark period 



EXTREME BACONIANS jii 

of slander and disappointment which might have wrecked 
a weaker man. 

In the Sonnets and the Poems may we not say that 
Bacon, hke Goethe and Schiller, was in his Sturm una 
Drang period, and that in Hamlet he had passed beyond 
it, even as Wallenstein succeeded the Robbers, and Wilhelm 
Meister blotted out Werther? The amorous ecstasy of 
youth had changed to the philosophic contemplation of 
maturer experience. Venus had yielded her sceptre to 
Philanthropia, but her subject and worshipper remained 
an aristocrat throughout. 

*' Aristocrat indeed ! " exclaim the Shakespearians ; 
" why, the frequent coarse remarks of the Plays show 
that he was a man of the people." This reply seems 
to me very weak. In an age of extreme coarseness, 
the immortal Plays were much more free from this 
defect than the majority of contemporary dramas. 
The penny and twopenny public had to be considered, 
and certain comic scenes and broad allusions were ex- 
pected by a certain class of the audience ; and Bacon, 
aristocrat as he was, still was quite equal to supplying 
the need, for we are told, on good authority, that Bacon 
could talk with all sorts of people in their own jargon. 
So the occasional coarseness of the dialogue teUs in 
Bacon's favour rather than not. 

But I must here repeat that I do not hold the extreme 
theory that Bacon wrote the whole of the wonderful 
dramas from beginning to finish, including all the excellent 
stage arrangement and all the subsidiary parts and scenes, 
and that we have not a word or a character which is due 
to Shakespeare the player. I think such a theory will 
not stand for a moment, and is absolutely impossible 
when we consider the contemporary attitude towards 
Shakespeare taken by his fellow-players, friends and 
enemies. Even his enemies never said he was a mere 
puppet in other people's hands — they gave him credit 
for " locks of wool " and " shreds," though the whole 
fleece was not his in their belief. There are some Warwick- 
shire places and characters here and there in the Plays, 



312 SHAKESPEARE EXCLUDED 

and some of the names of the roystering dramatis personce 
are well-known Stratford names which appear in municipal 
documents, and in the proceedings against recusants in 
Shakespeare's father's time. I should attribute such 
scenes and incidents of the Plays to Shakespeare rather 
than to Bacon. It seems far more likely that Shakespeare, 
being a broker and reviser of old stage property, and an 
expert at it, should touch up and arrange extra stage 
business for Bacon's plays, rather than that he should 
put them on the boards just as they came neatly written 
from the scrivener's clerk or the scriptorium at Twicken- 
ham, and make no alteration whatever. Indeed, I see 
plain evidence of Ben Jonson discriminating between 
Bacon the dramatist and Ovidian poet and Shakespeare 
the player — the Luscus who rants with his buskins on, 
and swears " by the welkin," and is after aU only a Poet- 
ape, and a parcel-poet with an unrestrained flow of words 
at times that makes him ridiculous rather than sublime. 
But he was not a bad fellow, had a good flowing stream 
of language, and a facetious grace to go with it. So, it 
seems, thought Ben Jonson, Henry Chettle, and others 
who knew him. 

However, Shakespeare had no share in the writing of 
Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, we may be pretty sure of 
that ; they were from the hand of Francis Bacon, and 
he has left his mark upon them. There is also a remark- 
able circumstance connected with Venus and Adonis 
which points strongly to Bacon, although no Baconian 
has availed himself of it yet. It is this. Venus and 
Adonis was enrolled on the Stationers' Register under the 
special authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Now 
the poem is not of a nature to be gathered for protection 
under an Archbishop's wing, and especially such an Arch- 
bishop as Dr. Whitgift was, who took severe steps against 
questionable and improper books, and was the strict 
ecclesiastical dignitary who closed the register against 
Hall's Satires, Marlowe's Ovid, and several other books 
of the same licentious character as Venus and Adonis. 
Why this unfair favouritism, as it must have appeared 



IN THE POEMS AND SONNETS 313 

to be to all who took notice of it ? If Bacon wrote it 
we have a good reason to give, but if Shakespeare, then 
it becomes much more difficult to explain. The Arch- 
bishop was very friendly to Francis Bacon, and knew 
him as a lad intimately, for he was his tutor when young 
Bacon came up to Trinity, his college. He knew nothing 
of Shakespeare, and would be against an actor who wrote 
licentious poetry, which would be a double offence in 
clerical eyes. 

This incident, then, of the Archbishop's special favour 
towards Venus and A donis points to an antecedent friend- 
ship with the author ; and in that case the author would 
be Bacon, and not Shakespeare. Or we, perhaps, may 
put it in this way ; Bacon asked his old tutor for his 
sanction to William Shakespeare's first attempt, and the 
Archbishop took Bacon's word for it, and granted his 
request. 

The Sonnets, too, are Bacon's entirely. They were 
early work, and in them he practised his " pupil pen." 
They were only for his private friends, and not intended 
for the general public's eye or ear, and therefore we find 
they were used by him as a safe storehouse to draw from, 
at least up to the year 1609, when they were published 
(as I think) without the author's knowledge. The proof 
of this is in the numerous parallelisms found between the 
Sonnets and the early plays, such as The Two Gentlemen 
of Verona, Love's Labour's Lost, A Midsummer Night's 
Dream, and Romeo and Juliet, all before 1598. After 
this date the parallel passages are few and far between, 
so we conclude that the Sonnets and these early plays 
were being composed about the same time, and that the 
author boldly plagiarised from himself in the Sonnets, 
because he thought they were not generally known, and 
never would be. They were only his exercise-book, the 
work of his " pupil pen." A good example of this appears 
in the Earl of Pembroke's letter to Robert Cecil, written 
very shortly after his release from the Fleet Prison, where 
he had been placed temporarily on Mary Fitton's account. 
In this letter (dated 1601) we find many striking phrases 



314 THE PROOF FROM 

and turns of thought which are evidently borrowed from 
one of the Sonnets. Now, this letter is supposed to have 
been concocted by the author of the Sonnets, or at least 
suggested to Pembroke by that author. So here we have 
Bacon in 1601 borrowing from his own " exercise-book " 
or pupil verses, as yet unpublished except in MS. to private 
friends. It was also hence a possible inference that Robert 
Cecil was not one of the favoured private friends who had a 
copy. This last inference is also on several other grounds 
not unlikely ; and indeed if the Cecils had an author's copy 
it would most likely have been preserved at Hatfield 
House, and we should have heard something about such 
a precious treasure before now. An original MS. of the 
Sonnets in the author's handwriting, if found in the 
cupboard of a lumber-room at Hatfield House, would 
have beaten even the " record " find of Elizabethan 
rarities at Lamport Hall. 

Another point is this : 

The Shakespeare Plays were being constantly revised. 
No one has ever ventured to contradict this certain fact. 
Indeed, Mr. Fleay, the great authority on the Chronology 
of the Plays, says " there is not a play that can be referred 
even on the rashest conjecture to a date anterior to 1594, 
which does not bear the plainest internal evidence of 
having been refashioned at a later time." * No other 
contemporary plays were habitually recast in this way. 
Ben Jonson, Marston, Dekker, and the rest had their 
quartos published and there was an end of them, as far 
as any touching up was concerned. If a prologue or 
epilogue or some libellous allusion were prohibited in the 
first publishing of a play of theirs, it might appear in a 
later edition with a few extra remarks. This happened 
in some of old Ben's hard-hitting plays, and in other 
writers too ; but there was no deliberate revision as in 
the Shakespeare Plays — in Love's Labour's Lost, in Hamlet, 
and in others. 

My point is that this constant revising and altering 
was distinctly Baconian. In his letters to Tobie Matthew, 

* ¥\e&y, Lift: of Shakespeare, 1 886, p. 128. 



THE CONSTANT REVISION 315 

his most intimate friend, Bacon refers to this habit of his 
own as well known to his friend, and we find also that 
he wrote and re-wrote his philosophical works, or some 
of them, at least four or five times over. And perhaps 
the Essays afford the best instance of all. Their successive 
alterations and revisions remind us of nothing so much 
as of the Shakespeare Plays ; and they received their 
final revision only just a year or so after the final revision 
of the Plays in the first folio. Take only one or two 
examples from the " Contents " page of almost any 
modern edition ; we have : 

2 Of Death, 161 2, enlarged 1625. 
II Of Great Place, 1612, slightly enlarged 1625. 
28 Of Expense, 1597, enlarged 1612, and again 1625. 
55 Of Honour and Reputation, 1597, omitted 161 2, re- 
published 16 1 5. 

The " real Shakespeare " of Ben Jonson, whose utter- 
ances " flowed with that facility, that sometimes it was 
necessary he should be stopped," and whose manuscript 
was so clean because " in his writing (whatsoever he 
penn'd) hee never blotted out line," certainly does not 
seem to be the kind of writer who would be always revising, 
touching up, and tinkering his first rapid inspiration. 
But Bacon seemed to enjoy this rather tedious literary 
labour, and on this account I think the constant changes, 
and the various readings and revisions on which critics 
have bestowed such astonishing pains, are all in favour 
of the Bacon theory of their origin. 

As to Shakespeare's MSS. with never a line blotted 
out, I take their origin to be, either the scrivener's office 
or the scriptorium at Twickenham or elsewhere, where 
Bacon kept his " pens " (penmen). I add one extract 
from a letter dated Gray's Inn, 17th February 1610. 
Bacon says (to Tobie Matthew) : " My great work (the 
Wisdom of the Ancients) goeth forward ; and after my 
manner I alter ever when I add : so that nothing is 
finished till all be finished." Nor must we forget that 
the great folio of 1623 was itself an immense work of 



N'w-' 



316 THE STRANGE CASE 

revision. The early quartos were altered, passages 
excised, and the Plays made better for reading in the 
study than by any improvement as acting plays. If 
Shakespeare had done this work, it must have been at 
least seven years previously, for he died in 1616. Why 
this delay ? The revision is far more likely due to Bacon, 
who in conjunction with Jonson is thought to have 
arranged the literary prefaces. 

It may fairly be said that the evidence in favour of 
the author having revised several Shakespeare Plays in 
or about the year 1623 is too strong to be put aside. But 
the author had been dead seven years, and although even 
in this twentieth century " he being dead yet speaketh," 
he does not speak quite in this peculiar manner, and has 
never since, as far as I have heard, added 160 new lines 
to one of his Plays. But this remarkable occurrence 
took place among many similar ones in 1623, and the 
play was Othello. This play had never been printed in 
any form during the lifetime of Shakespeare the player. 
It was first published in 1622, six years after Shakespeare's 
death, in quarto form, and in 1623 it was published a 
second time in the first folio with 160 additional lines, 
evidently from the hand of the author. As Bacon showed 
his head in Lucrece, so also I believe he showed his hand 
here. For from what other source did these lines come ? 
" Oh," replies the orthodox believer, " they came clearly 
from the original MS. at the playhouse, which the managers 
and possessors had supplied to the editors of the folio." 
But there are several things against this supposition. 
Why were not the additional lines printed in the quarto 
of the year before ? If it be said that was an imperfect 
and pirated copy, we still are at a loss to know why it 
was not printed long before, when other quartos were 
being issued with or without authority. Moreover, these 
added lines have a very Baconian allusion about the 

" Pontic sea 
Whose icy current and compulsive course 
Ne'er feels retiring ebb ;" 

which was one of Bacon's scientific facts which he referred 



OF OTHELLO AND RICHARD IIL 317 

to in a treatise on Tides written about the time of Shake- 
speare's death. Here Bacon mentions the " Pontus " and 
" Propontis," and the words " Pontic " and " Propontic " 
occur in the lines added to Othello. 

The case of the play of Richard III. is even stronger. 
There was a sixth edition of this play (quarto) in 1622, 
and in the folio edition of 1623 there were nearly 200 
new lines added and nearly 2000 retouched, and as there 
were several printer's errors peculiar to the quarto of 
1622 which reappeared in the same form in the folio of 
1623, it looks as if the additions and alterations were 
made upon the sixth edition in quarto, that is, were 
made six years after Shakespeare's death. There is 
much more evidence of a similar kind with regard to 
other plays, and the solution that Shakespeare the player 
left all this mass of corrections and additions in MS. 
when he died in 1616, appears to be in the highest degree 
unlikely, when we examine what really happened in the 
two last editions of Othello and Richard III., not to speak 
of others. 

As to the fons et origo of all this constant revision, 
both early and late (but especially late), my impression 
is that it was mainly due to the changing and progressive 
philosophical conceptions of Francis Bacon. Originally 
the Plays may have been the Works of Recreation of his 
*' great mind," but from a very early period it was his 
New Method of Philosophy which was the darling of his 
intellect, and other literary projects became subservient 
to this more important one. It was not long before some 
of the earlier plays were revised and brought into closer 
accordance with his philosophical views. Love's Labour's 
Lost, King Lear, and Hamlet seem the best examples of 
this ; while other plays, such as The Tempest or Macbeth, 
would be originally written to further or to illustrate the 
great conceptions of the New Method which so possessed 
his mind. But he would revise all again and again, even 
as he revised his Novum Organum every year for a long 
time, and the final revision took place for the great 
folio of 1623, whenfhe had practically finished those 




3i8 YORICK'S SKULL 

parts of his philosophical method he intended for the 
public. 

Again, was Bacon or Shakespeare the more likely man 
to depict accurately and to the very life the many aristo- 
crats by birth and intellect that figure so frequently 
in the unrivalled dramas ? If we think of their early 
experiences and opportunities, their respective positions 
and surroundings from the ages of seventeen to twenty- 
one — perhaps the most impressionable years of a man's 
life — we shall, I think, give but one answer, and that a 
most decided one : — Bacon has everything in his favour ; 
Shakespeare little, if anything. 

Hepworth Dixon sums up this early part of Bacon's 
life very well : 

" In the train of Sir Amyas Paulett, he rides at seventeen 
with that throng of nobles who attend the King and the Queen- 
mother down to Blois, to Tours, to Poictiers ; mixes with the 
fair women on whose bright eyes the Queen relies for her success, 
even more than on her regiments and fleets ; glides in through 
the hostile camps ; observes the Catholic and Huguenot in- 
trigues, and sees the great men of either Court make love 
and war."* 

This was surely a better seminarium, a more pro- 
ductive seed-plot, for the future everlasting flowers of 
courtly and cultured fancy that spring up before us in 
the Shake-speare Dramas, than young Shaxper of Strat- 
ford-on-Avon could possibly have access to. 

Again, there is that well-known incident of Yorick's 
skull in Hamlet. I do not think that it has ever been 
noticed how this points to Bacon much more than to 
Shakespeare. The dates here evolved are most trouble- 
some to the orthodox Shakespearians, and Mr. W. C. 
Hazlitt, in his last work on Shakespeare (Quaritch, 1902), 
has to invent a journey of young Shakespeare to London 
when he was about ten, on which occasion he rode on 
Yorick's back, as stated in Hamlet (!) ; for " Yorick the 
King's jester " was the famous Tarlton the clown, and 

* Hepworth Dixon, l'erso7ia I Life of Lord Bacon, p. 13. 



TARLTON THE JESTER 319 

court jester to Elizabeth. He died in 1588, when Shake- 
speare was about four-and-twenty, and in the first quarto 
of Hamlet it is said that Yorick had been buried " this 
twelve year," which would just be about 1588 if Hamlet 
were written in 1600 or 160 1, as is generally supposed, 
and so points pretty clearly to Tarlton, who was the only 
famous court jester it could refer to. 

As is well known, Hamlet refers to knowing this jester 
well, and being carried in play on his back, and to having 
kissed him often, and to having heard his jokes, which 
" were wont to set the table on a roar," — at Court pre- 
sumably. But supposing that Shakespeare's father did 
bring young William to town in 1574, when the boy was 
about ten, what likelihood would there be of his being 
carried pick-a-back by Tarlton or hearing his jokes among 
the diners at Court ? But Bacon when a boy was well 
known at Court, and was called by the Queen, who often 
used to talk with him, in a half-playful manner, " My 
young Lord Keeper," and had much greater chances of 
meeting the Queen's jester Tarlton than ever Shakespeare 
had. For as Fuller tells us : " When Queen Elizabeth 
was serious, I dare not say sullen, and out of good humour, 
he (Tarlton) could undumpish her at his pleasure. Her 
highest favourites would in some cases go to Tarlton 
before they would go to the Queen, and he was their usher 
to prepare their advantageous access unto her." * But 
the more Hamlet is read and understood, the more clearly 
does John Bright's vigorous Anglo-Saxon seem to be 
written across every page : " Any man who believes that 
William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote Hamlet or Lear 
is a " H'm ! Bona verba quceso. 

* Fuller's Worthies, ii. 312. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

WHY DID FRANCIS BACON CONCEAL HIS IDENTITY ? 
SUMMARY OF DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS 

I DO not think that sufficient attention has been given to 
the constant withdrawal of Bacon's name from his own 
writings in his earher days. He was nothing if not anony- 
mous, and was, so to speak, nurtured in an atmosphere of 
secret or concealed authorship. His father, Sir Nicholas 
Bacon, is supposed to have made use of a living con- 
temporary mask to hide his authorship of a certain 
political treatise. His mother. Lady Anne Bacon, made 
several learned translations from Latin and Italian, but 
withheld her full name. His brother Anthony, who was 
so clever with ciphers that he was asked to compose one, 
had many correspondents known well enough to him, but 
their signatures were very often altered, and other names 
assumed. The letters of Standen to Anthony Bacon are 
preserved at Lambeth, and he writes under two names in 
addition to his own. 

But young Francis Bacon preferred at first to write 
under no name at all, and to manage, if possible, so that 
his productions, chiefly at that time political, might be 
attributed to some greater celebrity. There was that early 
Letter of Advice to Queen Elizabeth, written in 1584-5, 
thought for a long time to be Lord Burghley's work, but 
known now to be written by Bacon. There was the letter 
to Monsieur Critoy, Secretary of France, written, to all 
appearance, by Sir Francis Walsingham, the English 
Secretary, about the year 1589, but now, after many years, 
shown to be drawn up by Bacon, who indeed used a great 
part of it almost word for word in his Observations on a 

Libel about three years afterwards. This " repeating 

320 



WHO IS RUSCUS? 321 

himself " Spedding calls " conclusive " evidence of Bacon's 
handiwork ; what say the Shakespearians to this ? 

It is known too, and mentioned more full}'^ elsewhere 
in this book, that Bacon was often writing letters from 
other people to other people, and even from other people 
to himself, and was indeed ready for any other varia- 
tion of epistolary correspondence that might serve his 
turn. 

I have often thought that Bacon was the "brown 
Ruscus " of Marston's first Satire ; at least I can think 
of no one who suits it better. I will, however, give the 
critics a chance of finding one : 

*' Tell me, brown Ruscus, hast thou Gyges' ring. 
That thou presumest as if thou wert unseen ? 
If not, why in thy wits half capreal 
Lett'st thou a superscribed letter fall ? 
And from thyself unto thyself dost send, 
And in the same thyself thyself commend? 
For shame ! leave running to some satrapas, 
Leave glavering on him in the peopled press ; 
Holding him on as he through Paul's doth walk, 
With nods and legs and odd superfluous talk ; 
When he esteems thee but a parasite. 
For shame ! unmask ; leave for to cloke intent. 
And show thou art vain-glorious impudent." 

— Satire, II. 5-18. 

The date of the above would be 1597-8, when Bacon 
was still looking forward to Essex, the Queen's satrap, doing 
something for his advancement in office. But whether 
Bacon be Ruscus or not, there is undoubted evidence that 
he lived in an atmosphere of fictitious letters, masked 
authorship, and general literary concealment in the earlier 
part of his career. He was a very hard worker too, and 
" sported his oak " as persistently as a Johnian sizar in 
his first year. Nicholas Faunt lets us know this, for he 
made a grievance of it when writing to his friend Anthony, 
Francis's brother. In 1584 Faunt called on Francis Bacon 
at Gray's Inn — a friendly call to exchange news about 
Anthony, who was abroad. Bacon's man-servant an- 
swered the door, and presently came back to say that his 

X 



322 WHY BACON USED A MASK 

master was too much engaged to see any one, but would 
Mr. Faunt leave his message ? No, Mr. Faunt would not, 
and went away rather in a huff, for he writes off at once 
to Anthony and tells him about what occurred at the door : 
" Neither was I so simple to say all to a boy at the door, 
his master being within. This strangeness hath at other 
times been used towards me by your brother," &c. I am 
afraid no excuse can be offered for this repeated dis- 
courtesy of young Francis. But if he were occupied with 
Venus and Adonis, or was reading or pondering over some 
early play, I for one would forgive him. 

But to return to the question we started with — the 
atmosphere of concealment with regard to authorship in 
which Bacon habitually lived in his earlier days — we must 
not forget that this private literary work under a mask was 
a maxim of Bacon's which he adhered to and stated openly 
in his later days. Thus in his treatise De moribus inter- 
pretis * he says : '^ Privaia negoiia personatus administret,^'' 
i.e. " Let him do his private business under a mask." 
Spedding has a footnote to this : "I cannot say that I 
clearly understand the sentence." That is rather Mr. 
Spedding's manner when he meets anything not coincid- 
ing with his own fixed views. The sentence seems clear 
enough, especially with our present knowledge. 

In fact. Bacon had learned by experience. When he 
came back from France with all the enthusiasm of youth 
and literary daring, he soon found that the envious critics, 
and his own relations too, were all inclined to depreciate 
and laugh to scorn his bold youthful attempts, his Greatest 
Birth of Time and other " phantasticall " conceits, as they 
would call them. So he imitated the " policy " of Aris- 
totle, the very policy that in his dedication to Lord 
Mount] oye of The Colours of Good and Evil he gives to the 
Stagirite as a possible reason for the obscurity of some of 
his Greek writings. Aristotle, he says, may have wished 
" to keep himself close, as one that had been a challenger 
of all the world, and had raised infinite contradiction," 
This was just Bacon's case, and we find that throughout his 

* Spedding, vii. 367. 



WHY BACON USED A MASK 323 

life he tried as much as possible to avoid causing any 
violent opposition or contradiction. 

But why did Francis Bacon so carefully conceal his 
share in the Plays of Shakespeare ? This question has 
been asked for more than forty years, and the answers 
generally given are : (i) That it was beneath his dignified 
birth and position to have anything to do with play- 
writing at all. The men who devoted themselves to that 
class of literary composition were a scurvy, needy, and 
loose-living lot, and both writers and actors were under 
the conventional ban of polite and serious society. * 
(2) Bacon's mother. Lady Anne, was a strong Puritan 
and a determined opponent of such things, and had much 
influence over both her sons, even when arrived at com- 
paratively mature age ; they dreaded her scorn and dis- 
pleasure. The answer has generall}^ been confined to 
these two points only ; but there is a reason which seems 
to me stronger than either, and that is, that it was a 
dangerous matter for a man with Bacon's hopes of advance- 
ment in life, and possible future political influence, to be 
mixed up with such plays. From their historical char- 
acter many of them lent themselves of necessity to deep 
political and religious questions. The charge of heresy 
or treason could easily be brought by enemies, and as we 
know from the case of Richard II., actually was brought. 
Nor is that the only instance. There is the case of the 
play of Henry IV. and Sir John Falstaff. Sir John was, 
when the play was first produced, not Falstaff, but Sir 
John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, the Protestant martyr. 
The contemporary Lord Cobham strongly objected, and 
the pla}/ was revised — the first part in 1598, and the second 
in 1600, expunging Oldcastle and putting Falstaff in his 

* This is well borne out by the evidence of Th. Lodge, who before 1589 
had taken an oath 

" To write no more of that whence shame doth grow 
[Nor] tie my pen to pennie-knaves delight." 

Lodge was the second son of Sir Thomas Lodge, Lord Mayor of London, 
and was about three years older than Bacon. The pennie-knaves were the 
groundlings of the theatre. 



324 WHY BACON USED A MASK 

place, and concluding with an epilogue saying, " Oldcastle 
died a martyr, and this is not the man." 

The Elizabethan age was one when treasons, plots, 
and conspiracies were matters of almost everyday occur- 
rence. There were, metaphorically and actually, danger- 
ous powder-mines in political circles which only required 
the falling of a spark to produce a most dangerous 
explosion. Elizabeth and some of her ministers evidently 
thought that the play of Richard II., for instance, was a 
spark of this kind. It was first published in 1598, with 
" W. Shakespeare " on the title-page, but it had been often 
acted before, and was once in the Northumberland MS. 
(1594), but had been afterwards torn out.* 

Queen Elizabeth had conceived great suspicion against 
this play of Richard II., and when Ha3rward's Henry IV. 
came out in 1599 with an extravagant dedication to Essex, 
her suspicions became still stronger, and she was seriously 
annoyed. Dr. Hayward barely escaped torture, and 
those who had procured the players to give the old play 
of Richard II. just before the attempt of Essex risked 
their lives for the deed at the trial. And yet not one 
single word was said during the whole long trial about 
William Shakespeare, the author of the play considered 
so suggestive and dangerous by the Queen, though his 
name was given at full length on the title-page. There 
is designed concealment here for some now unknown 
purpose. Was it that Bacon was the author of Richard II. 
and had turned Queen's evidence and made his peace 
with Elizabeth by attacking his former patron and friend ? 
and was it Alleyn who wrote and informed the autho- 
rities ? t And then under pressure, did Bacon's name 
come out and his " cheveril " yielding conscience permit 
him to take the part he did. But the Poetaster has given 
us some hints already about this matter. 

* We are reminded of; 

" Who has a book of all that Monarchs do, 
He's more secure to keep it shut than shown. 

— Pericles, I. i. 94. 
t Cf. p. 89 {ante). 



\ 



WHY BACON USED A MASK 325 

The little volume of Essays was the first book that bore 
the name of Francis Bacon on the title-page, although he 
was already thirty-seven years old and of great knowledge 
and experience. This, according to the dedication, ap- 
peared 30th January 1598. Shakespeare's first acknow- 
ledged Play was also published this same year — perhaps 
in the same month, but certainly at no great interval. 

The Essays of Francis Bacon, 1598, were dedicated to 
his brother Anthony, and tliis dedication is a very sugges- 
tive one, if well looked into in connection with the mystery 
of the Shakespeare Plays. He says first that he is acting 
now " like some that have an Orcharde il neighbored 
that gather their fiaiit before it is ripe, to prevent steal- 
ing." He goes on : " These fragments of my conceits 
were going to print : to labour the stay of them had bene 
troublesome, and subject to interpretation ; to let them 
passe had bin to adventur the wrong they might receive 
by untrue coppies, or by some garnishment which it might 
please any that shold set them forth to bestow upon them. 
Therefore I held it best discretion to publish them myselfe, 
as they passed long agoe from my pen. . . ." Then he 
informs his brother that he " did ever hold there might 
be as great a vanity in retyring and withdrawing men's 
conceits (except they be of some nature) from the world, 
as in obtruding them." 

Surely all this semi-obscure phraseology suggests to 
the reader concealed and " retyred " writings ; copies 
sent to press without author's revision ; retouching and 
" garnishment " by other hands than the author's ; and 
lastly, injunctions to " stay the printing " of some of these 
pirated books — although this " stay " is admitted to be 
a troublesome matter, and likely to rouse suspicion and 
false comment. Does not all this suggest that the author 
of the Essays had lately experienced troubles connected 
with publishers and the press-pirates, although this was 
ostensibly his first work ? 

But it may be asked, Why should Bacon write for the 
theatres at all if it was so fraught with danger to himself 
and his prospects ? There seems to be at least two reason- 



52ti WHY BACOX ITSEI) A MASK 

able repli^ tr thi? obier.tioTi. One is, that Bacon was by 
no means well supplied with ready money in his early 
days, or indeed at any time, for he was of lavish and 
extravagant habits, and a constant borrower : and so. 
when at Gray^ Inn. and having time on his hands, he 
- ':' in the agreeable task of *' invention."^ 
. , .. v^. parth' becanse it was his hobby laiid 

he generally took a good deal of tronble about the Masques 
ai Gray's Inn), and partly because he conld di^ose of them 
"to the theatres, and so earn some th ing to help his present 
wants, and conld arrange snch matters withont pnbhcitTi'. 

The pia\^ Ci^iQd be :r " ."^lis. and the early one? were 

all pnbhshed Jor pir:. .lont anv author's name : and 

when, later on in T5ofe. circnmstances arose whidi required 
Ric'tutrd II. or other histoiira] plays to be fathered by some 
onf.. William Shakespeare, as is supposed, either stepped 
into the gap. for a consideratinn. or allowed his name to be 
used tor the pla^^. as ii had been already used for the dedi- 
c^ition of the Poems to Sonthampton a few veais before. 

The general opmion that aH the Shakespearian Plays 
were prraied and purloined from stage copies, is. I beheve, 
qniie £ mstake. Money could be made by publishing 
any plays that were popular or bad made a reputatian. 
and we know that Ben Jonson used to get paid twice for 
ii25 w^ork. once for the stage manuscrg)t. and once more 
from the stationer to whom he gave it for pubh canon. 
Somerrmg stanoneis had xo pay a good long price for 
miponani works. Mr. Sidnev Lee wants to make us 
r-lieve thai in Shakespeare's tune there was no such 
iLJLiig as copyright. Tins assertion will not stand, or at 
any xaie is my^lpariTng Members of the Stationers' 
Company wiic» had agreed to purchase a manuscript copy 
oi an authors work were undoubtedhr protected m their 
sok- lights TO it. and tims pirate could be baffled by tike 
author or propnetor 02 an MS. selling ids rights to a duly 
authonsed ptmiisher. Bacon, wiio wanted money, and 
knew the law well enough, would certainlv adLopt the best 
plan for his own interest. 

Anotiier reason was. there beinr nc dailT papers or 



WHY BACON USED A >fA3K 327 

perwdicafa in the Elizabethan times, the atage was one of 
the best and readiest means for pnblishing opinions on 
any subject. A large public coxild be reached; many 
people who never opened a book corild have their minds 
opened and their views moditted while listening to the 
saitiments uttered by the characters on the stage. Ths"e 
was a fine chance for insrilling lotty thoughts and inspiring 
principles by means ot what was seen and heard on tie 
boards of the theatre — and the author ot tiie Shakespeare 
Play? used his opportunity weEL as we must; admit. >row 
Bacon was a man who would use such an opportmiity 
wefl. for the common good of humanity, for there was in 
Francis Bacon by nature a serious and lofty philanthropy, 
a desire to make the world better than he found it. which 
aH the studoits of Bacon who know him best are the irst 
to acknowledge. 

The author of the Plays has beei thought to be self- 
revealed in m any of the 'zharactas of his Plays, and, 
amongst otho^, especially in the melancholv Jacques of 
Ai Yqu Like It, who f^-yrTanTT«? : 

'' Invesc me in my motify ; give me lea^e: 
To speak my mind, and I wiH tiirotigii and tfirnuaii 
Cleanse die firnL bocty of df infarted waxMJ' 

If this be Bacon, as I believe it was, it wiEL help us to a 
good reason why he wrote rhe Plays. 

Xay, has not Bacon revealed his secret pretty plainly 
to those who can read betweai the lines in his last beauiifuL 
Praya: : ^ I have hated all cruelty and hardness of heart ; 
I have, though in a. despised meed, sought the good af cdZ 
m^rt" Xow, t hi s word zseed had then ordrnanly the 
meanins" of a garment — it vet survives in our " widows'" 
weeds '* — and in the Baconian and Shakespearian use of 
the word there ge errr s generally a halfHneaning of a 
garnit3it or dress that disguises the wearer. Thus in 
Sonnet lxxvi. : 

" Wtty write I still att ane^ evor rb(^ same. 
Ami keep iavetiiioii in. a noted weed, 
Thar evay wcard doth almasc retl my nam^e. 
Sh-Gwing: dieir birdi. and ^vrieice diey liid oraceeti ■ 



-f 



328 WHY BACON USED A MASK 

In both cases I believe Bacon is referring to tiie same 
things — to the works of his " invention," or, as he some- 
times phrased it, " works of his recreation." He means 
that in his Plays he had sought the good of all his audience. 
He means, I think, that he had sought to influence his 
countrymen for their good in politics, national history, 
and patriotism, as represented vividly before their eyes 
in the theatres, and by the despised companies of vagrant 
actors, men indeed contemned by serious culture (Sir 
Thomas Bodley, to wit) and Puritanical self-righteousness, 
but still members of a profession and practisers of an art 
whose increasing future influence on the general public 
Bacon's keen eyes would not fail to detect. 

To me, that very word " invention " seems to point 
directly to " plays " and " masques " and " long poems" 
like Venus and Adonis, that " first heir of my invention," 
as its author called it. 

We have good proof that about this very time — viz., 
the year 1580 — this word was so applied : " I confesse 
that ere this I have bene a great affecter of that vaine art 
of Plaie-making, insomuch that I have thought no time 
so wel bestowed, as when my wits were exercised in the 
invention of those follies." This is taken from " A 
second and third blast of retrait from plaies and theatres . . . 
set forth by Anglo-phile Eutheo.^' 1580, i6mo, p. 49. Herein 
is a very strong indictment of the Elizabethan theatres 
of the year 1580. It would, I judge, be a book dear to the 
heart of Lady Anne Bacon and all who thought as she 
did on this subject. 

The theatres during Bacon's time were the resort of 
many profligate and noisy persons. Halliwell-Phillipps 
gives many instances proving from contemporary writers 
that the theatres were sinks of iniquity, with a very 
bad reputation for brawling, low company, and general 
debauchery. Girls of good character would be afraid of 
risking their reputation by visiting such places, or if they 
did they would be masked. It is to be feared also that 
the custom (which was universal then) of dressing up men 
and boys in women's clothes was sometimes an incentive 



THE STATE OF THE THEATRES 329 

to perverted or Italianated instincts, and Italian morals 
were probably more known and imitated among the 
followers and patrons of the theatrical companies than 
in any other class of society. The University men who 
came to town to make a living somehow among people 
of this grade of society, were nearly always loose and 
profligate livers. Ben Jonson boasted that he could 
brand all his opponents in the Theatre War so deeply 
that no barber-surgeon could get the damning mark from 
their skin. It seems from what is said elsewhere in this 
book, that Bacon was one of this company in Jonson's 
eyes, and that probably Bacon himself thought he was 
aimed at, and sued for legal protection to shut Ben's 
virulent mouth. When we consider the very mixed 
and partly disreputable company before whom the 
plays of Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, and the rest were acted, 
the author deserves great credit for the endeavour to 
elevate the rough groundlings and stinkards who formed 
so large a part of the audience. The constant revision, 
too, and improvement of the plays — a real improvement 
and not merely ad captandum vulgus, nor yet ad captandam 
pecuniam — all this seems to point away from the money- 
getting player and part proprietor who hailed from 
Stratford, and to point in the direction of Francis Bacon, 
the great literary workman, who in his high philanthropy 
used a despised weed for the good of all men. 

The vShakespea.re Plays are superior in moral tone and 
decency to the ordinary plays of the period. This is gene- 
rally admitted, and is a credit to the author. Certain free 
passages here and there would be much better omitted, 
but they may be due to the work of an ill-advised colla- 
borator at the theatre, or may have been put in for the 
benefit of the groundlings, stinkards, and prostitutes who 
crowded the open space where they had standing room at 
a penny a head. But even in their best aspect they would 
have been an abomination to Lady Anne and her preachers, 
and after reading her letters to her son Anthony about his 
brother's shortcomings, his wastefulness, his " cormorant 
seducers," and his filthy Welsh knaves, we may well 



330 BACON'S LITERARY STYLE 

imagine that her ladyship would not be sparing of her 
invective if she had been told that Francis often went to 
Blackfriars to see the young eyases, that nest of boys " fit 
to ravish a man," to use Thomas Middleton's Italianated 
expression. This would indeed have roused her ire, for 
if Lad}^ Anne hated one thing more than another, it was 
riotous living, and sinful Popish practices and corrupt 
ways of life. 

It seems from what we read in the second Act of 
Hamlet that these little boy-actors, this "aiery of children," 
became quite the fashion among the smart set of court 
gallants, and " so berattle the common stages (as they 
call them) that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose 
quills, and dare scarce come thither." What harm the 
goose quills could do except write scandalous libels or 
vilifying ridicule, I know not. The passage is not quite 
clear to me. However, in the Induction to Cynthia's 
Revels, where three of the boy-actors were struggling with 
each other for the usual cloak for the Prologue, we see 
plain enough that these children were old in the ways of 
the world. " What ! " says the third child to the other 
two, " will you ravish me ? ... I'd cry a rape but that 
you are children." Ben Jonson knew his Italianated 
courtiers well enough. 

There is a general impression with regard to Bacon's 
prose style which deserves to be removed, for it is a 
primary cause by which many people are led to refuse 
any hearing whatever to the Bacon-Shakespeare ques- 
tion. Bacon is really very little read nowadays, even by 
fairly educated people ; and the general impression 
gained by turning over the leaves of his voluminous 
works is that he is dreadfully dry, prosy, and dull — 
a superficial view only, but it remains with many as 
a permanent one. Therefore, when it is suggested that 
Bacon wrote Shakespeare, such people, recalhng their im- 
pression of Bacon's style, reject the idea as not worth 
further consideration. But thorough students of Bacon 
speak of the " marvellous language in which Bacon often 
clothes his thoughts. His utterances are not unfrequently 



BACON'S LITERARY STYLE 331 

marked with a grandeur and solemnity of tone, a majesty 
of diction, which renders it impossible to forget and difficult 
even to criticise them," They say that " whenever he 
wishes to be emphatic, there is a true ring of genius in all 
that he says. There is no author so stimulating. Bacon 
might well be called the British Socrates." * If such a 
description be true, and its high authority forbids doubt, 
why should Bacon's style be an insuperable objection to his 
being the author of Shakespeare ? 

Bacon then, it seems, was a " British Socrates." Now 
Shakespeare was called a Socrates in the epitaph at Strat- 
ford Church. Which was really a Socrates ? Surely not 
Shakespeare. Whoever could have put up such an in- 
appropriate inscription with such a howling false quantity 
as that which now greets the eye of the Shakespeare 
pilgrim : 

" Judicio Pylium Sucratem ingenio, arte Maronem 
Terra tegit, populus moeret, Olympus habet " ? 

Besides, it suits Bacon so much better. But I deal with 
this point in my chapter on Jonson and Shakespeare. 

Nor are we justified in saying that since Bacon's prose 
style seems in general so heavy and so often quite un- 
illumined by any brightness of wit and fancy, that there- 
fore he had not the qualification necessary for a great poet 
or dramatist. Dulness of treatment in a prose work on 
politics, philosophy, or religion, and page after page un- 
illumined by any light of wit or fancy, is by no means a 
certain proof that the author cannot excel in the high poetic 
treatment of a congenial theme. Take Milton, for instance. 
We might parody Mr. Spedding, and say, " Whoever 
wrote the Colasterion and the De Doctrind Christiana, of 
this I am quite sure, it was not the author of Comus and 
Paradise Lost.'''' But we should be utterly wrong. One 
sublime intellect wrote both the dull and the lofty sub- 
jects. And may not the same be true of the lofty 
tragedies of Shakespeare, abounding in poetic conceptions 
of the highest order, and the excellent but somewhat 

* Nat. Diet. Biog., s.v. Bacon. 



332 BACON'S LITERARY STYLE 

dull and tedious philosophy of Francis Bacon ? And 
just as Milton had purple patches of echoing thunder 
and rhythmical charm in the midst sometimes of his most 
prosaic discourse, so we find that Bacon too was not 
wanting in these unexpected variations. We often meet 
in his solid and scientific prose the imagery of a true poet, 
combined sometimes with a rhythmic cadence that seems 
as involuntary as it is beautiful. 

And besides we have the speeches of the Hermit 
and others in the " Essex Device " — now acknowledged 
to be Bacon's work — speeches full of lofty imagination, 
and abounding in the deep-brained similitudes for which 
Bacon declared he had a kind of natural talent, and which 
we also meet with so often in the Poems and Plays. 

But let us hear another great authority on Bacon's 
style — I mean Dr. Abbott — and we shall find that many 
difficulties of the Bacon-Shakespeare theory vanish en- 
tirely. He says : 

"Bacon's style varied almost as much as his handwriting; 
but it was influenced more by the subject-matter than by youth 
or old age. Few men have shown equal versatility in adapting 
their language to the slightest shade of circumstance and purpose. 
His style depended upon whether he was addressing a king, or a 
great nobleman, or a philosopher, or a friend ; whether he was 
composing a State paper, pleading in a State trial, magnifying 
the Prerogative, extolling Truth, discussing studies, exhorting 
a judge, sending a New Year's present, or sounding a trumpet 
to prepare the way for the Kingdom of Man over Nature. It 
is a mistake to suppose that Bacon was never florid till he grew 
old. On the contrary, in the early Devices written during his 
connection with Essex, he uses a rich exuberant style and poetic 
rhythm ; but he prefers the rhetorical question of appeal to the 
complex period. . . . The Essays, both early and late, abound 
in pithy metaphor as their natural illustration. ... It would 
seem that Bacon's habit of collecting choice words and phrases, 
to express his meaning exactly, or ornately, had from a very 
early date the effect of repelling some of his hearers by the 
interspersion of unusual expressions and metaphors. . . . He 
seems gradually to have succeeded, with the aid of friendly 



A STRANGE VIEW 333 

critics, in shaking off his early tendency to ' spangle his speech ' 
with fit and terse, but unusual, expressions. But that he felt 
any pride in, or even set a just value on, his unique mastery of 
the English language, there is scarcely any indication." 

As is well known, one of the most curious of Bacon's 
literary opinions is his view that the English language was 
not permanent, and that only works written in the learned 
Latin tongue would descend to distant posterity. Hence 
he was more proud of his Latin works than his English 
ones — at least that was his view in his last years ; and he 
took great pains to have his acknowledged works, and 
his Essays especially, translated into Latin. What induced 
him eventually to hold this view seems very hard to dis- 
cover. Clearly he did not hold it in his younger sonneteer- 
ing days, as we know by those beautiful lines addressed 
to his " lovely boy " : 

" Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, 
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st ; 
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, 
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." 

But in any case, the strange fact remains that this 
most wonderful intellect, this " wisest of mankind," was 
apparently so careless of his literary reputation that he 
did not publish anything till he was nearly forty years old. 
He seems, by his letter to his uncle. Lord Treasurer 
Burghley, in 1592, to have determined to put his " care 
of (public) service " before the care of his books and 
" inventions," although in after life he admitted with 
sorrow how that his soul had long dwelt among such 
things as were enemies to his peace — multum fuit incola 
anima mea — or, as he paraphrased it in his last Prayer 
and Confession, " I may truly say my soul hath been a 
stranger in the course of my pilgrimage." That was his 
frequent cry. Bacon, like Milton, was not ignorant of 
his own parts ; he knew better than most men how much 
there needed to be done in the world, and in his " vast 
contemplative ends " he no doubt often thought that he 
was the man to do it. But he also knew that no man could 



334 BACON'S PHILANTHROPIA 

effect much without power, and means, and interest, and 
so he set himself to obtain those iulcra for moving the 
world as his first object. He allied himself so closely to 
Essex because he thought power lay in that direction 
rather than with the humdrum and commonplace policy 
of the Cecil party, although he was allied by blood to the 
Cecils. Indeed, in this letter to Burghley of 1592, Bacon 
opens his mind more than he had ever done before in 
writing. He says, " I. have taken all knowledge to be 
my province " ; and adds that if he could get rid of certain 
" rovers," who by " frivolous disputations, confutations, 
and verbosities " in one part of the province, and by 
" blind experiments " and " impostures " in another part, 
had done so much damage, that then he hoped that he 
could " bring in industrious observations, grounded con- 
clusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries ; the 
best state of that province. This, whether it be curiosity 
or vainglory, or nature, or (if one take it favourably) 
philanthropia, is so fixed in my mind as it cannot be re- 
moved." 

It never was removed, and all his life long this marvel- 
lous and mysterious * man could have truly said of the 
" Cup of Knowledge " in a line of his own Sonnets (cxiv.), 

"And my great minde most kingly drinkes it up." 

x\nd with him it would not have been a vain or foolish 
boast. If ever there was a great and kingly intellect, it 
was that of Francis Bacon, the " broad-brow'd Verulam." 
That intellectual philanthropia never was removed 
while he was one of the breathers of the world, and when 
the inevitable hour came, and he had to meet the 

" Barren rage of death's eternal cold," 

he could again say truly, "/ have, though in a despised 
weed, sought the good of all men.'" And wrapping himself 
round with his virtues as with a cloak, he glides away, 

* Cf. Ben Jonson's Epigram on Bacon's sixteenth birthday in 162 1 : 

"And in the midst 
Thou stand'st as if some mystery thou didst." 



NEXT DOOR TO A MIRACLE 335 

still a mystery, from the knowledge of his generation, and 
leaves his fame and his secret to the generations to come. 
In prose Bacon wrote only one important work of the 
imagination, and that but a fragment — The Neiu Atlantis ; 
but he has put into it more of himself, his aims, his desires, 
his tastes, and his ideals, than into any other prose work 
we have from him, and we see there the manner of man 
he was at heart. As Dr. Abbott well remarks : 

"Rising from the perusal of this little book we can better 
understand Bacon's whole life and character, and especially his 
unbounded self-respect, and the self-confidence which was the 
source of some of his best literary efforts, and some of his worst 
political errors. . . . He always regarded himself as a philan- 
thropist on a large scale, a true Priest of Science, after the 
manner of the Father of Salomon's House, having in his heart 
that true philanthropia which is ' the character of God Himself.' " 

In my opinion we are not far from the time when 
our fellow-countrymen and the English-speaking peoples 
throughout the world will unanimously admit that the 
most wonderful genius that ever spoke and wrote the 
English language was the man who combined in one hrain, 
and produced from one hrain, the Essays and Philosophy 
of Francis Bacon and the Plays, Sonnets, and Poems of 
William Shake-speare — undoubtedly the greatest miracle 
of intellect the world has ever seen, and a most extra- 
ordinary termination of the greatest literary mystification 
that ever passed unchallenged for nearly three hundred 
years. That Bacon and Shakespeare should live for years 
in the same city and neither know nor mention each 
other — being such men as they were — is an astonishing 
fact. That two men should write such an enormous 
amount of original literary matter, matter so unlike and 
so superior to what their contemporaries could produce, 
is an acknowledged marvel in the case of each of them. 
But that one of them, viz.. Bacon, wrote his own works 
and the other man's as well, is next door to a miracle, 
and has been voted an impossibility by millions. And 
how could Bacon, whose last and supreme poetical effort 
was a doggerel translation of a few of the Psalms, by any 



336 A DIFFICULTY OVERCOME 

possibility write Vemts and Adonis, the Sonnets, and that 
marvellous poetry of the highest order of expression con- 
tained in the Plays ? 

Such things do seem impossible when first stated in 
their bare simplicity ; and that is why so many people 
are orthodox and follow their fathers' and grandfathers' 
beliefs on the subject, and why so few are heterodox or 
Baconians. But the more the matter is looked into, the 
more difficult does the Shakespeare hypothesis become, 
and the more easy the Baconian. Insuperable difficulties 
seem to disappear, or to be so modified as to be almost 
negligible. I hope it will not be thought egotism if I give 
a part of my own case. 

I was orthodox like my forebears for many years. I 
heard occasionally of the Baconian heresy, but I had an 
" insuperable difficult}^ " which quite prevented me be- 
coming a heretic. I thought some of the heretical argu- 
ments very forcible, but my " insuperable difficulty " 
effectually prevented me from following up such argu- 
ments. This was my difficulty : I could not believe that 
Bacon, whose highest and most serious effort in poetry 
seemed to have been reached in his translation of a few 
of the Psalms in his old age, could have possibly produced, 
at any time of his life, the Sonnets, the Plays, or the 
Poems. However, one day I bought from an old book- 
stall a little book of Greek Epigrams, with Latin trans- 
lations, for the modest sum of sixpence, being attracted 
by a very pretty printer's mark (Felix Kyngston) on the 
title-page. On looking into it at home I found to my 
surprise an English poem in it, translated into similar 
rhyming Greek verse by Thomas Farnaby the famous 
schoolmaster, who attributed the English Poem to Lord 
Verulam. The first verse was : 

" The world's a bubble and the life of man lesse than a span, 
In his conception wretched, from the wombe so to the tombe ; 
Curst from the cradle, and brought up to yeares with cares 

and feares 
Who then to fraile mortality shall trust 
But limmes the water, or but writes in dust." 



A DIFFICULTY OVERCOME 337 

I remember that I thought the last two Hnes rather 
good, and that Farnaby's authority was contemporary and 
sufficient. This made me read Bacon's Psalms again, 
and they seemed more passable ; and the thought struck 
me that as Bacon was known to have in a high degree 
the faculty of throwing himself into the character he 
wished to represent, and to adapt his literary expression 
to the peculiarities of the person represented, so he had 
proceeded here, and had attempted the Psalms in the 
popular manner of Sternhold and Hopkins and the other 
writers of the old version of the Psalter. The Elizabethan 
Psalms were written down to the level of the people, and 
if they had been more poetically translated, and finer or 
loftier language used, they would not have been so accept- 
able to the class of people for whom they were mainly 
intended. There was an archaic roughness of metre which 
those people expected and preferred. I thought therefore 
that Bacon had most probably adapted his Muse to 
those same ends, and hence the apparently low stan- 
dard of poetry. Thus did I leap over my " insuperable 
difficulty," and it has not troubled me since. Besides, 
I know that Bacon, to use his favourite expression, 
would always wish to " chalk a door " for his reception 
rather than try to enter by force, " pugnacity, or con- 
tention." 

But some one may object to me that after all I 
have said as to the reasons why Bacon did not ac- 
knowledge his dramatic works, such as — (i) fear of 
offence to friends and relations, especially his mother ; 
(2) damage to his own political reputation and pros- 
pects ; (3) danger of associating his name with the 
public exposition on the stage of historical incidents 
and characters, whereby charges of treason and heresy 
might be incurred — that still I have given no good 
reason why Bacon should not have acknowledged the 
immortal dramas either by his will or just before his 
death. There was no Lady Anne then to fear, no poli- 
tical prospects to damage, no danger of a charge of 
treason then. 

Y 



338 WHY THE SECRET WAS KEPT 

This has seemed another " insuperable objection " to 
many people, and is undoubtedly a strong argument 
against the Baconian authorship. The only reasons that 
struck me (and I think I have mentioned them somewhere 
in this volume) were that this " last confession " would 
call attention to the scandal of the Sonnets, and Southamp- 
ton and other parties concerned were still alive. That 
was one grave and forcible reason ; and another might be 
that Bacon still hoped, even to his dying day, to take his 
seat in the august assembly of the House of Lords, and 
felt that the acknowledged authorship of the actor's plays 
would be a decided bar to that. Or again, it has been 
supposed that his great admiration for Natural Philosophy, 
and his devotion to it in his later years, had made him 
undervalue the former fruits of his invention, which after 
all he always considered as works of his " recreation," 
and not as the serious business of his life. In his great 
mind eventually they did not bear comparison with his 
Instauratio Magna, his Novum Orgamim, and his other 
philosophical treatises, which he was so careful to have 
turned into Latin so that they might " live " to future 
ages. The " recreations " and the poems might die for 
any Resuscitatio that should ever come from his living 
lips ; but he must have known that some of them, perhaps 
many more than we know, bore his private mark stamped 
on their head and tail, and that was left to the next ages 
and to the eyes of future generations to discover. If, 
however, these reasons seem insufficient for such a tre- 
mendous difficulty, I will add another which has lately 
come under my notice, and seems sweetly reasonable, for 
I firmly believe that our greatest Englishman died a truly 
religious man. 

I will introduce it by quoting Henry Vaughan from 
the preface of his Silex Scintillans, 1655. 

" It is a sentence of sacred authority that he that is dead is 
freed from sin ; because he cannot in that state which is without 
the body, sin any more ; but he that writes idle books makes for 
himself another body in which he lives and sins after death as 
fast and as foul as ever he did in his life : which consideration 



A PATHETIC RENUNCIATION 339 

deserves to be a sufificient antidote against this foul disease. . . . 
I myself have for many years languished of this very sickness ; 
and it is no long time since I have recovered. . . . The first 
that with any effectual success attempted a diversion of this 
font and ever-flowing stream (of vain and vicious books) was 
the blessed man Mr. George Herbert, whose holy life and verse 
gained many pious converts, of whom I am the least ; and gave 
the first check to a most flourishing and admired Wit of his 
time." 

WTiat if Francis Bacon was the greatest of these 
** pious converts " of whom Vaughan professed himself 
the " least " ? Many things are more unlikely, for Bacon, 
we are told, " put such a value on " George Herbert's 
judgment, " that he usually desired his approbation 
before he would expose any of his books to be printed, 
and thought him so worthy of his friendship, that 
having translated many of the prophet David's Psalms 
into English verse, he made George Herbert his patron 
by a public dedication of them to him, as the best judge 
of divine poetry." * 

What if one of the greatest masters of varied poetic 
expression made a renunciation of that most excellent 
gift in his later years, and put all his best thoughts on 
other objects, and despised comparatively that immortal 
possession and inheritance of his, that KTrjfxa et? aei, the 
Plays of Shake-speare ? Well, he did, there is really no 
question about it at all. Hear his own words in the De 
Augmentis Scientiarum (1623). " Poesy is as it were a 
dream of learning : a thing sweet and varied and fain to 
be thought partly divine, a quality which dreams also 
sometimes affect. But now it is time for me to become 
fully awake, to lift myself up from the earth, and to wing 
my way through the liquid ether of philosophy and the 
sciences." 

This is a pathetic renunciation, contained in, and 
surrounded by, the prose of a scientific work ; but had 
not the same master-mind some years before, under the 

* Life of Herbert, by Izaak Walton. 



34° BACON GRIEVES FOR ARIEL 

guise of Prospero, in that last great semi-masque The 
Tempest, expressed the same resolve : 

" But this rough magic 
I here abjure. 

I'll break my staff, 
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, 
And deeper than did ever plummet sound, 
I'll drown my book." 

And then his " dainty Ariel " is dismissed somewhat 
regretfully. " I shall miss thee," he says, but his decision 
is to devote himself to his only daughter, the adorable 
Miranda. 

I must admit that all this last reasoning about Bacon's 
renouncing the vain delights and dreams of Poesy is hardly 
consistent with the preparation of the first folio for publica- 
tion in co-operation with Ben Jonson, which is my as- 
sumption throughout ; but it may partly account for 
the folio not being claimed by its rightful author, and in 
any case Bacon's view of Poesy in 1623, and no doubt 
earlier, is, I think, worthy of record. I owe it to an Essay 
on Shakespeare-Bacon, which is anonymous, but has a 
postscript signed "E. W. S. : Rome, March 1899." It is 
one of the best contributions to the controversy that I 
know. 

Most people think that the very fact of Shakespeare's 
name being signed in full to the dedication of Venus and 
Adonis quite settles the authorship, and that to attempt 
to upset such plain evidence is the work only of self- 
deluded cranks. But the fact is, that the majority of 
Shakespeare readers are unable properly to grasp the 
situation. Concealed and feigned authorship was not an 
unheard-of thing in those days by any means. Greene 
tells us this in his Farewell to Folly (1591). " Others — 
if they come to write or publish anything in print — which 
for their calling and gravity being loth to have any pro- 
fane pamphlets pass under their hand, get some other to 
set his name to their verses. Thus is the ass made proud 
by this underhand brokery." I certainly think there was 



THE WAY TO STATE THE PROBLEM 341 

" brokery " at work in the matter of the Shakespeare 
Plays and Poems. 

One reason for the determined and obstinate opposition 
to the Bacon hypothesis is the way in which the heresy 
is stated. Often enough, indeed far too often, it is put 
in the bald form " Bacon wrote Shakespeare " ; which is 
almost like a blow in the face to devoted Shakespearians 
of all degrees. It is an irritating way of stating the 
case, especially to many who, like myself, think it an 
incorrect and loose statement. If people would only 
set forth the heresy in the way I am now going to 
suggest, it would be much less annoying, much more likely 
to be listened to and accepted, and, in my opinion, much 
nearer the truth. Don't say " Bacon wrote Shakespeare,'* 
for at first blush it sounds absurd both to the learned and 
unlearned, but invert the proposition thus : " There seems 
strong evidence that Shakespeare, the shrewd actor- 
manager, was always ready to use up for his stage pur- 
poses any suitable plays, new or old, that came into his 
hands ; he would ' take up all ' and think no particular 
harm of it. He was in the habit of ' gagging ' as well ; 
Ben Jonson hints at that practice being used in one of 
his plays, and Ben took the trouble to exclude the actor- 
manager's stage additions from the printed copy. But 
with so many book-pirates about, it was impossible for 
Bacon to exclude the stage gag, and so no doubt it forms 
fart of the immortal plays ; but only a small part for- 
tunately. There is also strong evidence that very many 
of the Plays that Shakespeare took up, and which passed 
under his name, really came in the main from Francis 
Bacon. Putting aside many suspicious circumstances 
connected with their production both first and last, which 
rather tell against the Stratford man, the Plays possess a 
language, a philosophy, and a learning which preponder- 
antly point to the great Francis Bacon, as against any 
other writer of that- period." 

Shakespeare's friends and fellow-actors must have 
known very well whether Shakespeare was equal to 
writing something for the stage, or whether he was 



342 THE NEW EVIDENCE 

unequal to such an effort altogether. No doubt Shake- 
speare could gag if required, could touch up and add to 
old plays and arrange them for the stage. All his friends 
must have known that, or supposed it, and that is why 
his productions were received as a rule without comment 
or derision. He was a " broker " of plays, and managed 
to get some first-class work into his hands ; we must give 
his fellow-actors Burbage and Kemp, and Lewin and 
Arnim, and such-like persons " behind the scenes," credit 
for being sharp enough to know that. But he was a 
" shrewd fellow " and honest in his dealings, and could 
send out scrip that beat all the University men's work ; 
and he was a peaceable, good-natured fellow, was gentle 
Shakespeare, and patrons of the drama and men of 
worship spoke well of him ; and he had a facetious manner 
of writing, and quick natural talent too. And so Shake- 
speare's Plays were a success, and Shake-speare deserved 
it, they said. Somehow thus must we account for the 
attitude of the age. 

It has been possible to use this statement for many 
years now, and if the heresy could have confined itself to 
such statements and to the proofs of them, and if also the 
cranks and fanatics and " frauds " had been kept out of 
the controversy, then I think the world of literature would 
have turned Baconian long before now. Moreover, if the 
present writer be thought worthy of notice, a stronger 
statement can now be made in addition to the above. It 
can, I hope, now be said : " There is also apparently good 
external, internal, and direct evidence that Francis Bacon 
wrote Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, and the Sonnets, and 
since it is an admitted axiom that the man who wrote the 
vShakespeare Poems and Sonnets also wrote the Plays, we 
must now give up the Stratford Shaksper with the best 
grace we can, and allow Bacon his glorious seat wellnigh 
on the highest peak of Parnassus." 

The facts that Shakespeare's name appeared on the 
title-pages of his Plays and was never objected to at the 
time, that no one of his contemporary playwrights ever 
claimed the Plays, that his authorship of them was gene- 



ELIZABETHAN METHODS 343 

rally admitted by the public, have always been held by 
the orthodox party to be facts that could not possibly be 
put aside or denied. But these facts are always taken to 
be much stronger than they really are. If properly 
weighed as evidence they are very light. We must not 
estimate them according to modem literary standards. 
Authors and printers alike, in Elizabethan days, were 
constantly deceiving people as to the authorship of the 
books that were published, and were often " hand and 
glove " together in managing it. Authors frequently put 
on the mask of their printer, especially on the threshold, 
or in the vestibule of their books. Gervase Markham and 
others are well known to have done this, and also to have 
joined with other authors in producing plays, and the joint 
production would go before the public in the name of one 
author only. Consequently, in many cases people could 
never be sure who had helped in the work besides the man 
whose name was on the title-page. Curiosity was rather 
repressed than stimulated by this collaboration of authors, 
for if there was little chance of finding out what special 
parts each author wrote, what was the use of making 
curious inquiries about them ? 

vSo when William Shakespeare's name began to appear 
on the printed Plays in 1597 and 1598, no one had any- 
thing particular to say about it. There was no literary 
enthusiasm, no great discovery of a new genius. William 
Shakespeare was, I suppose, pretty well known as an 
active factotum who had to get somehow or other as many 
plays for the theatre as he could. They appeared under 
his name ; there was nothing strange to people in that, and 
so long as Shakespeare's Plays were attractive no one 
troubled much as to where they came from. That was 
Mr. Shakespeare's business, not theirs. A fellow-player 
or critic, here and there, might hint, and did hint, that 
this active factotum of the stage did not supply all the 
wool for the new materials offered to the public, but only 
a few shreds ; or again hint that " his feathers might be 
very fine, but were they his own ? " But for the general 
public, whether against plays or fond of them, whether 



344 OBJECTIONS MET 

Puritan or gallant, the authorship or qualifications of 
Shakespeare troubled them not for one moment. For 
these and other reasons I hold that the " otiose assent " 
of contemporaries to Shakespeare being the man who 
wrote the Plays, is not a proof of much importance. 

One favourite argument against the Baconian author- 
ship of the Sonnets is, that they are so thoroughly unlike, 
in tone and manner, the staid and learned philosopher oi 
Gorhambury. But look at the case of the learned and 
religious Giles Fletcher, D.D. ; who would have expected 
that he would write such a collection of amatory sonnets 
as Licia (1593, 4to) ? They were anonymous, and no one 
suspected the real author till a few years ago, when he 
was found out by some one noticing an allusion in the 
ninth stanza of the First Piscatory Dialogue, written by 
his son. This divine did not, like Bacon, show his own 
head, but his son showed it for him. 

Moreover, it was not at all unusual for a man in Francis 
Bacon's position at Gray's Inn to be mixed up with stage 
matters and dramatic pageants and court interludes. 
Indeed, it was to a man who almost in all things held 
a similar position in life to Francis Bacon that we 
owe the beginnings of the historic drama. Ferrers, a 
lawyer, who maintained himself in court favour under 
Henry, Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth, was noted as a 
director of dramatic pageants, and he it was who com- 
posed the first English historic legend in the Mirror for 
Magistrates in 1559. There were nineteen legends, from 
the reigns of Richard II., Henry IV., Henry V., Henry VI., 
&c., and Ferrers was responsible for three. If one lawyer 
— Ferrers — laid such a good foundation for the historic 
drama, why should not another lawyer — Bacon — build 
upon it ? 

Only a few years later another novelty was added to 
the drama. This too came from the lawyers, and was 
carried out amongst them. In 1566, George Gascoigne 
translated from Ariosto, for representation at Gray's Inn, 
the prose comedy Gli Suppositi. This, acted under the 
title of The Supposes, is the first comedy written in English 



SHAKESPEARE NO MERE MASK 345 

prose, and was thought good enough to be borrowed from 
in the underplot of the Taming of the Shrew. And who 
was George Gascoigne ? We are told he was " well-born, 
tenderly- fostered, and delicately accompanied." He was 
sent to Cambridge, and thence proceeded to the Inns of 
Court. Entering into the fashion of the time, he wrote 
love- verses which gained him no credit with the graver 
sort. Aspiring to political distinction, he sat some time 
as a burgess for Bedford. When play-writing became the 
rage he at once figured in the front of playwrights. He 
was very extravagant ; and being disinherited, he sought 
to retrieve his fortunes by marrying a rich widow. So 
far his biography is very like that of Francis Bacon, but 
afterwards he came to grief socially, and went to fight 
under the Prince of Orange, and the end of his days was 
not fortunate. However, his early biography shows that 
there was no bar or boycott if a man of good birth and 
position wrote for the stage. 

Why then, it may be asked, was there so much con- 
cealment in Bacon's case ? Surely Lady Anne's rooted 
objection to the play-houses would not sufficiently account 
for it ; and granting this as for the plays, why should 
Bacon have all his life long been a concealed poet, and 
professed " not to be a poet " at all ? May not his early 
love-poems to young men, the peculiar circumstances 
connected with them, and some current vulgar scandal 
to boot, all have tended to make Bacon renounce any 
open profession of poetry, and to try to conceal his 
identity and connection with this kind of literature 
altogether — nay, more, to pass it off under another's 
name ? 

My arguments throughout are chiefly concerned with 
the Sonnets and Poems, which are comparatively new 
ground for the Bacon theory. As may be supposed, I 
strongly hold that Francis Bacon wrote at least the finer 
passages of the Plays, and that the frequent revisions and 
additions were due to his habit of constantly rewriting 
and altering his work. But it must not be thought that 
I consider Shakespeare a mere mask for Bacon and 



346 THE EARLY PLAYS 

nothing more. I know some hold this view. I cannot 
support it for a moment. 

I think it is a great mistake to depreciate Shake- 
speare's professional and business capabilities. He could 
hardly have been the successful man he was without 
possessing them in a high degree. Mere money gifts by 
Southampton or Bacon would never have permanently 
enriched an incapable or ordinary playwright. By the 
year 1594 Shakespeare had served, as it were, a seven 
years' apprenticeship, and a most "industrious apprentice" 
he had, without doubt, been ; one worthy of the canvas 
of a contemporary Hogarth. From this year he takes his 
place as one of the chief actors in the principal company 
in London, and he is the acknowledged writer of the most 
popular love-poems of the time. This last qualification 
was by far the most esteemed by all people. Lucrece and 
Adonis were far above any plays. Poems were, it was 
thought, fit work for a prince, but plays were connected 
with strolling vagabondism only. 

I do not profess to be a critic of the Plays or of their 
assumed dates. With our present bibliographical know- 
ledge the latter subject is too intricate and obscure to 
handle with any confidence. But I submit that we give 
many of the Plays far too late a date for their original 
conception and production. Especially is that the case for 
many of the Plays which appeared for the first time in 
print in the first folio of 1623. Such plays as The Two 
Gentlemen of Verona, As You Like It, All's Well that Ends 
Well, and others not published till 1623, may well have 
been written about the time that Shakespeare first came 
to London, or a year or two later. Indeed, this has 
seemed so probable with some Shakespearians that they 
have suggested that young William brought several of 
these MS. plays up to town with him, carefully stowed 
away in his pocket when he first left Stratford for good. 

Such views undoubtedly favour the Baconian author- 
ship. For Francis Bacon was the elder of the two men, 
both in years and experience of life ; he had far greater 
educational facilities, and considerably more leisure time 



LOGIC OR INTUITION? 347 

at Gray's Inn for writing and thinking and seeing the 
fashionable world, so admirably depicted in the early 
plays, than ever Shakespeare had. And so it seems far 
more likely that these precious and immortal MSS. were 
lying roughly sketched and ready for revision and enlarge- 
ment in his desk, rather than in Shakespeare's pocket. 
Besides, if they were really safely packed under the Swan 
of Avon's wings when he took flight for London town, 
why did he not bring them out in his own name at once ? 
They would not have disgraced him. He had no strong- 
willed mother of whom he stood in awe. He had no 
reputation to lose, but everything to gain. In fact, there 
was only one thing to prevent him from offering them at 
once to his fellow-townsmen then in London, and that 
one thing was — he had not got them. However, they 
came in course of time, and a very good thing he made 
out of them. I know this is rather a vulgar way of 
putting it, but sometimes the " man in the street " blurts 
out a conviction in his own tongue which effectually 
breaks through the elegant and finely-spun meshes of 
doctrinaire arguments. 

There is the intuitional argument as well as the logical 
one. It may be more liable to error, it may be the special 
argument of the weaker sex and of the uneducated, but 
it sometimes goes straight to the bull's eye which logic, 
with all its artillery, fails to hit. Logic is of course by 
far the safer weapon of the two, and I have tried to make 
the best use I can of it in this present work. The other 
weapon, the woman's weapon, is apt to be sometimes 
very erratic ; it will even seem to turn round at times and 
shoot the person who uses it. Some Baconians, I fear, 
have suffered in this way ; it is then called literary suicide 
or literary self-effacement. The man who states publicly 
that Shakespeare could only write his own name, and 
hardly that, is a case in point. The men and women 
who write voluminous and ridiculous romances which 
they read letter by letter or word by word from Bacon's 
printed works are other cases in point ; they are literary 
self-effacers or something worse. Such are the necessary 
evils of unsupported and unrestrained intuition. Delia 



348 THE AUTHOR'S APOLOGIA 

Bacon suffered originally from an attack of this kind 
which developed into something much more pitiable. It 
has been said of the commentators on the last book in 
the Bible, that " the Apocalypse either finds men mad 
or leaves them so." I pray that there may never be 
cause to apply this remark either generally or specially to 
those who meddle with the Bacon-Shakespeare question. 
To me it is one of the most interesting and curious questions 
that we meet with in the whole domain of literary history, 
and when people say, as has been said frequently to me, 
What does it matter whether Bacon or Shakespeare is 
the author ? I can give no other answer but a stare of 
amazement. I feel I could give an answer, but that it 
would be lost on such questioners. 

I know that he who writes on this subject poses as 
" a crank " before the great majority of educated people ; 
so it is not an inviting field of literature by any means, 
and publishers say it means a dead loss. Well, it is a 
pleasure to me, and we must, I suppose, sometimes pay 
for our pleasures. But in self-defence I may be allowed 
to say this, that I have endeavoured to use the safe 
weapon of logic and reason wherever that weapon was 
available ; but I submit that the more dangerous weapon 
of intuition cannot be wholly dispensed with in this 
contest. We must deal with the probable, the possible, 
and with what seems likely to have occurred judging 
from the facts before us. Here intuition, the historic 
conscience, and some acquaintance with the lights and 
shadows of the literary atmosphere of the Tudor period 
must go hand in hand with bare logic, or the whole con- 
troversy becomes stiff and lifeless. Probability is one 
great guide of life, and intuition sometimes helps us to 
what is really probable better than logic does. When 
intuition takes the form of a predominant and over- 
mastering idea, then — that way madness lies. 

However, I feel pretty sane when nearing now the 
end of my book, and if I have had an attack, it has been 
a very mild one. For I have certainly no predominant 
idea, which my mind would steadfastly refuse to give up, 
on this vexed question. With me it is an intensely 



AND FINAL APPEAL 349 

interesting and difficult problem — a kind of literary chess 
problem, where there are very many possible moves, and 
much foresight and general knowledge of the game is 
necessary to become a good player. I have studied the 
game because it interests me, and therefore I feel that I 
am somewhat more capable of making a fairly correct 
move than an ordinary policeman or detective, or even 
Sherlock Holmes himself, and certainly more capable 
than the city men who go down first-class or in a Pullman 
car to their daily business ; for from my own experience 
they seem to have, as a rule, no knowledge of the game 
and no interest in it. But perhaps I have travelled in 
the wrong carriage and conversed with the wrong people. 

Finally, then, I wish this work to be considered 
tentative, and not the creature of a predominant idea. 
I would give up my Rival Poet and my Dark Lady, would 
renounce Mary Fitton and all the Adonis-like young 
damsels with their doublet and hose, and the codpiece 
which may have taken Bacon's curious fancy ; I would 
renounce them all, or any other false or irregular moves 
I may have made in this difficult game ; — nay, I would 
suffer fools gladly and take a checkmate from wise critics 
with a joyful countenance, if they will only treat the 
matter seriously and play fair. 

I have already made this appeal in the Preface or 
Vestibule of this House of Controversy, and having 
passed through various chambers I have now arrived 
at the back door or exit. I here repeat my appeal, make 
my bow, and leave my hterary card : — 

So, Reviewers, save my Bacon, 
O let not Folly mar Delight ; 
Here my name and claim unriddle, 
All ye who fix the italics right. 
The discovei^ei^ in the middle 
My last book will to me unite. 



APPENDIX 

OF 

LITERARY CURIOS 

CONNECTED WITH 

THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE 
PROBLEM 



APPENDIX 



THE "TEMPEST" ANAGRAM 

Among the curiosities of the Uterature of the Bacon-Shakespeare 
theory, there is hardly a more remarkable one than what is called 
the Tempest Anagram. Who the ingenious discoverer was, and 
when it was first given to the public, I know not. I first met 
with it in Notes and Queries, and I think it worthy of reproduc- 
tion here outside the body of my evidence. 

The anagram is formed from the last two lines of the Epilogue 
to The Tempest, viz. : 

" As you from crimes would pardon'd be. 
Let your indulgence set me free." 

Anagram. 

" Tempest of Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, 
Do ye ne'er divulge me ye words." 

This Tempest anagram is, to say the very least in its favour, 
a remarkable coincidence. Take the supposition that Bacon, 
or the editor of the folio collection of printed and unprinted 
plays in 1623, wished to insert a cryptic distich which contained 
anagrammatically the key to the real authorship of the volume — 
then I say no more suitable and likely place could be found, 
for it was the concluding distich of the first play in the book, 
and of the last play that had been produced by the author. 
It was in exactly the same position as the two concluding lines 
of Lucrece, which gave us Bacon as the author of that poem 
by the singular device we have already noticed. It was the 
Envoy (I'envoi) or last two lines of the Epilogue, and this Envoy 
was generally supposed in sonnets or similar short poems to 
have a peculiar significance, and if anything was to be specially 
conveyed it was, so to speak, relegated to this last distich, which 
was set back a little, in the letterpress, from the preceding lines 
of the sonnet or poem. And this was the case in the Tempest 
epilogue, and in all the Shakespeare Sonnets in their original 
edition of 1608. 

353 Z 



354 APPENDIX 

And there is this curious extra fact in the original edition 
of the Sonnets, that the famous Sonnet cxxvi., beginning "O 
thou, my lovely boy," a sonnet supposed to be the Envoy sonnet 
of the whole first series (i.-cxxvi.), has of itself no Envoy at all, 
but only a blank space enclosed in brackets, as a sign that the 
Envoy was either never written, or else had been blotted out or 
erased by the author for some purpose known best to himself. 
Possibly, and I think very probably, this missing distich or 
Envoy contained some statement or allusion which would have 
proved a key to the whole series, and therefore too dangerous 
to be set down in black and white, or left to the tender mercies 
of a piratic or indiscreet copyist. In fact, the locale of the 
Tempest anagram is exceptionally appropriate, and the anagram 
and its progranima are both fairly suitable, and as to sense and 
meaning are consonant with the supposed purpose. For the 
anagram to be defective by one letter is no great objection in 
one of that length. And the chief objection, viz. that Francis 
Bacon was not yet created Lord Verulam when the play was 
originally written, is hardly a valid objection at all ; for the very 
assumption that we have taken is that this Envoy (and perhaps 
the whole epilogue) was added of set purpose when The Tempest 
was edited and printed and put in the forefront of the famous 
folio, some years after its first production on the stage, and then 
Lord Verulam was a correct title of Francis Bacon. 

THE FIGURE ANAGRAM 

This is another ingenious discovery in connection with our 
subject, called an anagram by a misnomer ; for it is really only 
a progressive spelling out of names, beginning at stated points 
of a poem or paragraph, and ending exactly at the last letter or 
letters of the same. 

The discoverer, who gives himself no other name but that of 
a " Shake-spearian," takes Ben Jonson's Address to the Reader 
facing the famous Droeshout engraving, and extracts from it, 
beginning always at the letter F or f, the following keys, 
which sufficiently, as he thinks, unlock the difficult mystery of 
authorship. 

Beginning with the first F of the word Figure in the first line 
he gets : 

(i) Francis Saint Albans his Booke .... (Fj) 
in this way : beginning with F he next proceeds to look for the 



APPENDIX 355 

nearest letter r, and then for the next a, and so spelling steadily 
on and not turning back, he goes on till he gets Francis ; and 
then still proceeding in the same way to the very last letters of 
Ben's poetical address, he gets the decisive statement as above. 

Then he takes the second / in the word for, in the second 
line, and proceeding as before right to the end he gets 
again : 

(2) Francis Saint Albans his Booke .... (Fj) 

There being three more /'s he treats them in the same way 
and gets : 

(3) Francis Saint Alb. his Booke (Fg) 

(4) Francis Saint Alb. his Booke (F4) 

(5) Francis his Booke \ 

(Ffi) 

(6) Francis B his Booke ) 

But these apparently decisive readings do not satisfy our 
persistent solver of enigmas. He starts again with the fourth/ 
and gets : 

(7) Francis Bacon his Booke (F4) 

From the third /^ 

(8) Francis Bacon his Booke (Fg) 

From the second_/— - 

(9) Francis Bacon his Booke (F2) 

From the first/"— 
(10) Francis Bacon his Booke ..... (F^) 

These last two spellings end on the word " looke." In order 
that my readers may conveniently test the results of F^, F.„ Fg, 
&c., I reproduce Ben Jonson's famous address in the Folio : 

To THE Reader. 

This Figure that thou here seest put 

It was for gentler Shakespeare cut ; 
Wherein the Graver had a strife 

With Nature to out-doo the life : 
O, could he but have drawne his wit 

As well in brasse, as he has hit 
His face ; the Print would then surpasse 

All, that was ever writ in brasse. 
But since he cannot, Reader, looke 

Not on his Picture, but his Booke. 



356 APPENDIX 

I will not leave this feast of literary ingenuity dcnj/x^oAos, 
and therefore supply as my own contribution an additional F 
formed on the same principle from the capital letters only of Ben 
Jonson's lines above, which spells out FR.B. or the very head 

which Bacon shows in the first lines of Lucrece, pR- And 

besides this, notice the care and ingenuity that has been dis- 
played in working up this literary device. It is truly Baconian, 
for it takes the vestibule or foreword, and the endlines or last 
distich, as the places he determines on for the concealment of 
his head. This was exactly the device in Lucrece, where we had 
a moiety in the foreword or vestibule, and he " saved his bacon" 
till the last couplet. As in Lucrece he drew attention to the 
device by an artfully concealed phraseology in the dedication, 
so here he draws attention (as I suggest) by a good downright 
N.B. in the last line — the N being in the first word and the ^ 
in the last word of the concluding line of the whole poem. 

I am no believer in Mrs. Gallup, nor yet in her ciphers — 
or any one's ciphers much ; but I will back my bi-Iiteral N.B. 
against hers any day. It starts well, runs straight, and comes 
in by a head at the finish ; what more can a backer want ? 
However, I will not back it as a bookmaker, and therefore it 
is not jotted down in the body of my book, but is put with the 
rank outsiders in the appendix. But in a fairly arranged 
" freak " handicap, with nominations limited to four litteraires 
only, I would nominate N.B. if they would take me as qualified, 
and would nominate FR.B. as well, and declare to win with 
FR.R., and back N.B. for a place. 

WHO WAS MR. HEWS? 

Sonnet xx. 

In this Sonnet, which may be called the "Master-Mistress" 
Sonnet, both from its using this very expression, and also from 
its general tone, there is at line seven the following description 
of that lovely youth to whom the Procreation Sonnets and many 
other early ones were addressed : 

" A man in hew all flews in his controlling." 

This line has exercised the critics and expounders very con- 
siderably, and mainly for this reason, that the word Hews is put 
into italics, and begins with a capitalletter. This evidently looks 



APPENDIX 357 

prima facie as intending some hidden allusion, and I believe 
that is the correct view to take, although I fear that I can add 
little or nothing of an elucidatory character. 

But for the amusement of those who have not troubled to 
make many researches into the Sonnets, I will give a few of the 
solutions, partly on account of their being literary curios. 

Almost the first solution given was that we had here the full 
name of the mysterious Mr. W. H., who was the "sole begetter" 
of the Sonnets, and that he was a Mr. W. Hews or Hughes. 
But as no one ventured to fix upon any Mr. Hughes who would 
suit the required conditions, the suggestion fell to the ground, at 
least for some time. Some one then thought of Hughes the 
friend of Chapman, but he too was clearly out of court. Then 
came the ingenious Mr. Gerald Massey, who holds the record 
for having devoted more pages to the puzzling Sonnets than any 
two men living or dead. He said : " It is EWES that was 
aimed at by the double entendre, which leads us beyond the mere 
name to a person of importance; for EWE was a title of 
Essex ! The earldom was that of "Essex and Ewe." Thus Mr. 
Massey takes the line to mean that Southampton's " comeliness 
and favour were far superior" to those of Queen Elizabeth's 
favourite Essex, and thus he was in the position to get the upper 
hand at court. " Such punning upon names was a common 
practice of the time, and had been done before on this very 
name." We are then given a quotation from Peele in his 
Polyhymnia, speaking of Essex : 

" That from his armour borrowed such a light. 
As boughs of yew ( = Ewe) receive from shady stream." 

This seemed to Massey to settle the matter, and also to exclude 
Herbert from being the man addressed, for " Herbert came too 
late for any rivalry with ' Essex and Ewe ' ; his rivalry was with 
'young Carey,' a much later favourite." 

Ingenious as this was, it would not, however, satisfy a writer in 
Blackwood (May 1901), who was a pronounced Herbertite, and 
was not going to have his theory spoilt by any Ewes, or courtesy 
titles of Essex. He had a courtesy title of Herbert, Earl of 
Pembroke that would put all the Ewes out of the running, and 
that was the title Lord Fitzhugh or Fitzhew, which belonged to 
William Herbert through one of the baronies of the Earls of 
Pembroke. So his solution was : 

" A man in hew — the Lord Fitzhew, — the lord of all the sons of 
Hew — all the Hews." 



358 APPENDIX 

What could be plainer? But it is a hopeless task to please 
everybody, and very soon up starts a "wild" theory that the 
man meant was the William Hughes who always took women's 
parts in Shakespeare's Company, and that from the force of 
circumstance and from Shakespeare's (?) "sportive blood" this 
William Hughes became the master-mistress of that intense 
passion — so wondrous, so un-English, so semi-pagan and Italian- 
ated ; — that passion that appears to us clothed in such a robe of 
beauty and with such an exquisite texture of interwoven words 
and rhythm in the Sonnets of the ever-living Poet. The dis- 
coverer backs up his theory by quotations and illustrations 
from other Sonnets. Thus in Sonnet Liii. we have Willie 
Hughes described in terms that would most suitably represent a 
quick-change female impersonator. Willie Hughes is a perfect 
Proteus : 

" What is your substance, whereof are you made, 
That millions of strange shadows on you tend ? 
.Since every one hath, every one, one shade, 
And you, but one, can every shadow lend." 

— Sonnet LIII. 

What can this last line mean, asks our wild CEdipus, unless it 
refers to him who had all Hews or Hughes or hues in his "con- 
trolling " ? And does not this same Sonnet proceed to call him 
"Adonis" in one line, and then in the next lines "a painted 
Helen " ? Ergo, Mr. Willie Hughes as a female impersonator 
used the hare's-foot with splendid effect {sple7idide ??iendax), and 
was a handsome young man to boot. 

Nor is this all the evidence. Sonnet lxxviii. gives us a 
most convincing piece of proof, all the stronger because it is so 
artfully hidden from the reader's view. The poet is here evidently 
addressing "Willie Hughes," and says in the third and fourth 
lines : 

" As every alte/t pen has got my use, 
And under thee their poesy disperse." 

This undoubtedly refers, though the ordinary reader would 
hardly have suspected such a thing, to Willie Hughes leaving 
Shakespeare's Company for the rival theatre of Alleyn (= alien) 
and Henslowe, the inducement being, most likely, better pay. 
The reference is " as plain as a pikestaff" as soon as it is revealed 
to us. The words my use = my Hughes = my Willie. They 
have to rhyme with Muse in the first line, and Hughes is a far 



APPENDIX 359 

better rhyme than tise, and explains the italicised alien { = AUeyn) 
and the whole sad separation of the lovers much better than 
my use, which is a very bald expression, and indeed one hardly 
capable of a rational explanation. 

And again there is the famous Sonnet lxxxvi. concerning the 
" Rival Poet," or Chapman as most good critics hold him to be. 
The "ever-living" author of the Sonnets declares here that he 
was not afraid of the Rival Poet's verse, but when it was de- 
claimed by his beloved " Willie " at a rival theatre the flow of 
his own Muse was stopped. The words of the Sonnet are : 

" I was not sick of any fear from thence : 

But when your countenance fil'd up his line, 
Then lack'd I matter ; that enfeebled mine." 

—Sonnet LXXXVI., lines 12-14. 

As the ingenious discoverer tells us, "Willie Hughes left 
Shakespeare for Alleyn and Henslowe's rival company of actors, 
and played a part in Chapman's plays, which were then being 
produced there. Willie's countenance filled up, or filed up, as 
another reading has it, the Rival Poet's lines. This was too 
much for Shakespeare, and went near to silencing his Muse 
altogether. Looked at in this light the Sonnet becomes free 
from haze or obscurity." 

This attempt, of which only 200 copies were privately printed, 
is, as all must allow, a clever pretence for unravelling a skein of 
mystery. It is unfortunately marred by one defect, and that is, 
that Willie Hughes the beloved female impersonator only 
exists in the " wilde " imagination of the discoverer. However, 
if we are enthusiasts, that is a mere detail. We can look such 
facts boldly in the face, take their measure, brush them aside, 
and go on our old paths with unabated confidence. The true 
enthusiast will alway have the courage of his convictions ; and 
a true Shakespearian (as the discoverer was) would be the last 
to allow that Willie Hughes, or Willie Shakespeare, or any Willie 
whatever, could exist only in his imagination. Ex nihilo fii'htl 
fit. Ergo, if Willie Hughes existed in my imagination, he could 
not exist only there, but must have existed somewhere else 
previously ; he could not have been nowhere or non-existent, 
for ex nihilo nihil fit is incontrovertible ; he could not therefore 
be the simple product of my brain, and only to be found there ; 
he must previously have been somewhere else, and why not 
possibly in the Hews of the Sonnets ? When enthusiasts, 



36o APPENDIX 

whether Baconian or Shakesperian, tackle you in this manner, 
what are you to say or do ? My advice is, go out for a httle 
fresh air, and have a quiet talk with the policeman at the nearest 
corner. He, at least, is not likely to be a metaphysician. A 
conversational tonic of this kind will be found to be a great 
relief. Crede Roberto experto ! 

Another explanation is by a gentleman who claims Sir PhiUp 
Sidney as the author of the Sonnets, and holds that this par- 
ticular Sonnet is addressed to Sidney's great friend. Sir Edward 
Dyer. The line is an evident punning allusion to his name, for 
a Dyer can control all hues. This ingenious solution comes 
from America, and its author's name is J. Stotsenburg ; so it 
looks as if we had here a good " blend " of German research and 
American smartness. 

It appears also that there was a contemporary William 
Hughes, a musician, but there is nothing to connect him with 
the Sonnets. Also, by a singular coincidence of name, a Mrs. 
Hughes, who was Prince Rupert's mistress, was the first woman 
to take female parts on the stage, playing Desdemona in 1660. 

Another explanation is that Hews stands for a faithful re- 
tainer of the Earl of Essex, who had great influence with the 
Earl, and the meaning of the line is that the young Adonis, 
Southampton, the Child of State, the world's fresh ornament, 
and coming favourite of the court, would soon take the place of 
Hews and control him and the Earl as well. I believe there was 
a man of such a name in the Earl of Essex's household, but that 
is about all that is known. 

I have collected these comments on this line of Sonnet xx. 
more for amusement than for any critical purpose. Perhaps all 
that we can really say with any confidence is, that the " sweet 
boy " (Southampton, as I think) had a complexion of the hue of 
" rose-cheeked Adonis." In Sonnet civ. this hue is again 
referred to as " your sweet hue," and the ever-living Poet declares 
after "three winters' cold" and after : 

"Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd," 

this fine complexion, this special beauty, this sweet hue "me- 
thinks still doth stand." 

Elizabeth was wont to choose her favourites for their youthful 
grace and high complexion, and no one would know better how 
suitable in this way young Southampton was, than those who 
associated with him intimately at Gray's Inn. 



APPENDIX 361 

The author of the Sonnets seems to lay a good deal of stress 
on this rosy beauty of his own sweet " Rose," and to consider it 
a valuable asset for a young man to possess. It strikes me that 
Francis Bacon is far more likely to have thought and said such 
things than William Shakespeare. I go no further, and I leave 
Mr. W. H., Mr. William Hughes, Mr. William Hall, for the next 
writer who feels inclined to thoroughly tackle the question of 
" Who's who in the Sonnets," and will leave this title at his own 
service if he wants to choose one. Sometimes an author would 
give his last penny for a really catching title. 

HAMLET AND PLATO'S CAVE 

It has been thought that in the first scene of the second Act 
of Hamlet the author had the seventh book of Plato's Republic in 
his mind. For Hamlet is described as coming to Ophelia while 
sewing in her chamber "as if he had been unloosed out of hell," 
and from the description of his appearance it would seem that he 
had come forth from some prison or dungeon. Now, in Plato's 
remarkable allegory the world is represented as a subterranean 
cavern where men are kept prisoners, and so fettered and bound 
that they can only look to the rear of the cave and see the 
shadows cast on the inner wall from the light at the cave's 
entrance. Objects pass by the entrance, but the prisoners see 
them not ; they see only their shadows cast on the wall. That 
this allegory was alluded to in Hamlet seems further shown by 
a passage later on in the play, where it is said, " Then are our 
beggars' bodies and our monarchs and outstretched heroes the 
beggars' shadows." Now Plato had described {Rep., vii. 521) 
evil consequences which would ensue if the government of the 
state were seized by beggars or persons destitute of appropriate 
qualifications. So the curious expression about beggars and 
heroes quoted above from Hamlet seems to mean that the 
monarchs and heroes of the world are as the shadows of such 
beggars. Moreover, that most difficult expression, " outstretched 
heroes," becomes perfectly clear if Plato's allegory is meant, for 
then their shadows would be lengthened on the wall. We should 
also be able to account for another difficulty — that of Hamlet 
being thirty years old when intending to resume his studies at 
Wittenberg (Act. V. sc. 6), for Plato {Rep., vii. 539) fixes the age 
of thirty as the age when the serious study of dialectic or philosophy 
should be commenced. 



362 APPENDIX 

Mr. Th. Tyler was the first to draw attention to this ab^^truse 
reference to Plato in the Academy, June 25, 1898, but it did not, 
as far as I know, call forth any further remarks. It seems not 
unlikely, and certain passages of the Sonnets rather bear it 
out, e.g. Sonnet cxx. : 

" For if you were by my unkindnesse shaken, 
As I by yours, y'have pass'd a hell of time" ; 

also Sonnet lviii. : 

" I am to wait, though waiting so be hell " ; 
and Lucrece, 1286 : 

" And that deep torture may be called a hell 
When more is felt than one hath power to tell." 

Hamlet no doubt had "pass'd a hell of Time" before he thus 
made his appearance to Ophelia, 

" His doublet all unbrac'd. 
No hat upon his head, his stockings fouled, 
Ungartered, and down-gyved to his ancle." 

" Down-gyved " is an odd word to explain, if we will not think of 
Plato's fettered prisoners. 

By the time that Hamlet was written Bacon had come to see 
that if he or the world in general were to embrace the new 
philosophy, the new method, the Novum Organum that was 
developing in his mind, then all the fallacies and false appear- 
ances, all the " Idols of the Cave," must be stripped off or 
escaped from, and the fetters of the prison-house unshackled. 
The ordinary conventional dress of the schools must be dis- 
arranged or thrown aside; " no hat " and "doublet all unbrac'd," 
and stockings "down-gyved to the ancle," if we are to escape 
from the "confines, wards, and dungeons" of our "goodly 
prison" in this world below. In Scene ii. of the same Act, a 
little farther on, Hamlet gives his philosophy of the world's 
prison-house in his finest pessimistic vein ; but enough has been 
adduced to show that we have Bacon's language all through, and 
not that of Shaksper the Player. 

SOME ECCENTRIC CRITICS OF THE SONNETS 

The interpretations given to the Sonnets have been almost 
endless, and no two commentators have ever thoroughly agreed 
with each other. 

For eccentriciiy I think a gentleman named Heraud carries off 
the palm. The poet's " Two Loves " were the Roman Catholic and 



APPENDIX 363 

Reformed Churches, and there is not a single Sonnet addressed 
to any individual at all. In the later Sonnets we are to think of 
the author as having his Bible open before him, and reading the 
Canticles. There he finds that lady " black but comely," who is 
the spouse of his celestial friend and himself too. M. Fernand 
Henry, who has lately edited the Sonnets in a French translation, 
is reminded by this eccentric expositor of Father Hardouin the 
learned Jesuit, who held the opinion that the Odes of Horace 
were written by the monks of the Middle Ages (13th century), 
and that Lalage the poet's mistress was but a symbol of the 
Christian religion. 

This same M. Fernand Henry is much disgusted with those 
English critics who will not hear a word against the morality of 
their great literary idol — who will have it that their national poet 
was a faithful husband and a devoted admirer of the sex in the 
highest and purest bonds of affection, and a man who lived 
all through his London life in a singularly gentle and pure way, 
and joined his dear wife in his country home to end his days 
with her and his family in peace — a respectable and ideal 
Englishman. 

No, our French critic will not stand this. " II n'est que la 
pruderie et le cant anglais capables de s'offusquer k si bon 
marche." No, Shakespeare had his moral weaknesses, and we 
must admit them ; but they are not to blast his character or his 
reputation. He holds that his very avowal of them, and the 
way he makes it in the Sonnets, carries forgiveness with it, and 
induces pity for that wonderful intellect, that it should be fated 
to ride so " sorry a beast " as was at times no doubt that mortal 
body that carried him. Our complaisant Frenchman finishes 
thus : " On ne trouve pas dans Saint Augustin un aveu plus 
humilie, et combien le contraste est plus frappant si Ton rap- 
proche les sonnets des Confessions oil Jean-Jacques revele, avec 
une sorte d'ostentation, les secrets les plus caches de sa vie, 
poussant le cynisme jusqu'a inventer parfois des choses qui ne 
sont rien moins que certaines ! " 

Another Frenchman, M, Louis Direy, who prints his con- 
tribution at Poverty Bay, New Zealand (1890), holds the view 
that the Sonnets of Shakespeare are the " lyrical drama of his 
inner life." In brief, "The Orpheus is alone on the stage. 
He there evokes two personages—his Friend and his Mistress. 
Who are they ? His Friend is his heavenly spirit, his immortal ; 
his Mistress is his earthly passion, his perishable. There is 



364 APPENDIX 

besides 'the Beast that bears him' — his body. This trio is 
himself." 

This Frenchman from the Antipodes is quite an enthusiast 
in his way, and has somewhat the temper of a prophet of Israel. 
He ends with a 

" QUOUSQUE TANDEM ! " 

" For now three centuries of fiery ordeal our twin stars, William 
and Anne,* been jointly defamed, nay divorced, as it were, before 
the world by the infamous verdict of worser England, even such as 
Shakespeare's biographers and the Shakespearian Judases, who in 
recent times having failed to filch the thorn-and-laurel crown from 
Shakespeare's seraphic head, for to clap it on Bacon's barren brow, 
are nowadays viciously, insidiously attempting in Christian England, 
in the native country of gentle William, the Poet of poets, to erect 
altars to Baal, under the lurid meteor of Goth Goethe and his Mephis- 
topheles. 

" It is for you, fairer, better, truer England to quash now that 
odious verdict, and to piously celebrate the trieval jewel-wedding of 
William and Anne, in Shakespeare's spiritual Church of the Future, 
singing in unison the chaste Canticle of Canticles, the song of the 
Swan of Avon, as once sung by ' the bird of loudest lay.' Thus will 
the eye of the living God smile on the inauguration of the promised 
Jerusalem." 

We are generally taught that French writers are distinguished 
for their lucidity. Perhaps the climate of the Antipodes has 
not been favourable to this quality, or else it was the English 
language that did not give him a fair chance. 

Among the curiosities of the Sonnets the following is too good 
to be left out. A Mr. Samuel Smith Travers, who hails from 
Tasmania, published in 1881 at Hobart Town a small work, 
entitled Shakespeare^ s Sotuiets. To wJiom were they addressed "i 
On the leaf before the preface we have : 

TO • J.O. HALLIWELL-PHILLIPS 

THESE • INSVING • LINES 

ARE • DEDICATED 

BY 

THE • WELL-WISHING 

ADVENTVRER • IN 

SETTING 

FORTH. — S. S. T. 

* Why is it that the New World will persist in bringing in Mistress Anne 
Hathaway ? At home we seldom, if ever, connect her with the Sonnets. 



APPENDIX 365 

Page 13 gives his answer. "They were addressed to his 
[Shakespeare's] son. Not a son by Anne Hathaway, but to an 
illegitimate son by some other woman — as evidence would go to 
show, by some woman of high rank. . . . Can we imagine that any 
mere woman could resist him ? " The proof takes twenty-four 
pages altogether. 

DID SHAKESPEARE WRITE BACON'S WORKS? 

The next Bacon-Shakespeare curio that seems to me worthy 
of preservation here, is an elaborate article by an American 
named J. Freeman Clarke, who shows to his own satisfaction 
that it was far more likely that Shakespeare wrote all the great 
philosophical works of Bacon than that Bacon, being the man 
he was, should have been able to write the Plays and Poems 
of Shakespeare. This essay appears in Nineteenth Century 
Questions (Cambridge, Mass., 1898), and I have reduced it in 
compass considerately, but have not omitted, I believe, any 
important point. 

I may say, first of all, that I believe each man wrote his own 
works as we have had them from the beginning. I regard the 
monistic view that one man wrote both Bacon and Shakespeare as 
in the last degree improbable, not merely a marvel, but a miracle. 
But if we are compelled to accept the view which ascribes a common 
source to the Shakespeare Drama and the Baconian Philosophy, I 
think there are good reasons for preferring Shakespeare to Bacon as 
the author of both. 

It will not be sufficient to say that Shakespeare could not have 
acquired the necessary knowledge, for we cannot understand now 
the rapidity with which all sorts of knowledge were imbibed in the 
period of the Renaissance. It was the fashion of that day to study 
all languages, all subjects, all authors. Thus speaks Robert Burton, 
who was forty years old when Shakespeare died : " What a world 
of books offers itself, in all subjects, arts, and sciences to the sweet 
content and capacity of the reader ! " A mind like that of Shake- 
speare could not have failed to share this universal desire for know- 
ledge. After leaving the grammar-school at Stratford, he had nine 
years for such studies before he went to London, and when he began 
to write plays, or dress up old ones, he had new motives for study, 
and would have to keep up his classics for his own interest. 

Look at Ben Jonson's case ; that furnishes the best reply to those 
who think that Shakespeare could not have gained much knowledge 
of science or literature, because he did not go to Oxford or Cambridge. 
What opportunities had Ben ? A bricklayer by trade, called back 



366 APPENDIX 

immediately from his studies to use the trowel ; then running away 
and enlisting as a common soldier ; fighting in the Low Countries ; 
coming home at nineteen, and going on the stage ; sent to prison for 
fighting a duel — what opportunities for study had he? He was of 
strong animal nature, combative, in perpetual quarrels, fond of drink, 
in pecuniary troubles, married at twenty, with a wife and children 
to support. Yet Jonson was celebrated for his learning. He was 
master of Greek and Latin literature. If then Ben Jonson, thus 
handicapped, could manage to acquire this vast knowledge, is there 
any reason why Shakespeare, with much more leisure, might not 
have done the like ? 

But my position is that if either of these writers wrote the works 
attributed to the other, it is much more likely that Shakespeare the 
Poet wrote the works of Bacon the Philosopher than that Bacon the 
Philosopher wrote the poetical works of Shakespeare. For where 
can you find any good examples of philosophers becoming supreme 
poets ? But, on the other hand, authors whose primary quality is 
poetic genius have often been eminent as philosophers. Milton, 
Petrarch, Goethe, Voltaire, Coleridge, were primarily and eminently 
poets ; but they turned out very excellent metaphysicians, men of 
science and philosophers as well. 

But what instance have we of any man like Bacon, chiefly eminent 
as lawyer, statesman, and philosopher, who was also distinguished as 
a supreme poet ? What great lawyer ever became eminent as a 
dramatic or lyric author? Cicero tried it, but his verses are doggerel. 
If Bacon wrote Shakespeare, he is the one exception to an otherwise 
universal rule. 

Again, this assumption that Shakespeare wrote Bacon will explain 
at once the insoluble problem of the contradiction between Bacon's 
character and conduct and his works. In Bacon's writings he is 
calm, dignified, noble. In his life he was an office-seeker through 
long years, seeking place by cringing subservience to men in power. 
To gain and keep office he would desert his friends, attack his 
benefactors, and make abject apologies for any manly word he might 
have incautiously uttered. . . . How was it possible for a man to 
spend half of his life in the meanest of pursuits, and the other half 
in the noblest? We cannot marry his low conduct to his high 
philosophy. But we are really not required to do so, for the difficulty 
is quite removed if we suppose that Bacon, the pushing courtier and 
lawyer, with his other ambitions, had also the desire to be a philo- 
sopher, or at least the fame of it, and so induced Shakespeare, then 
in the prime of his powers, to help him to write the prose essays and 
treatises which are his chief works, and to allow Bacon's name to 
appear on the title-pages. In fact. Bacon, writing to Tobie Matthew, 
his one great friend to whom he was least reserved, in 1623, says that 
he was then making his writings more perfect "by the help of some 
good pens which forsake me not." If Bacon used other people's 



APPENDIX 367 

pens then, why not earHer in life, when Shakespeare was ahve ? 
We also can explain on this assumption that very curious fact that 
Shakespeare seemed to leave no books or MSS., or even to mention 
them in his Will. This is quite accounted for — he had let Bacon 
have them all before he died, and Bacon went on working at this 
material till he finished his (Shakespearian) Novum Organuin, and 
the rest. No doubt Ben Jonson gave Bacon considerable help too — ■ 
he would be one of his "best pens " ; and since in 1613 Shakespeare 
bought a house in Blackfriars, where Ben Jonson also lived, these 
two great men would be very conveniently situated for co-operating 
with Bacon in writing his Novum Organum. There can be very 
little doubt that from Bacon's character and court-attendance and 
busy official life, he had neither time, nor inclination, nor ability for 
such laborious moral and philosophical work — Shakespeare and Ben 
Jonson did it for him, and he took the fame and glory. 

Another writer (W. D. G.) in the Aberdeen Alma Mater, Jan. 
12, 1898, mentions a friend who was so ultra-Shakespearian that 
he claimed Bacon's Essays to be the work of the poet Shake- 
speare. They bore the stamp of the Bard of Avon on their very 
first line, it being a fine example of an English hexameter ; only 
some interpolator had inserted a bloated epithet, making the line 
a Heptameter : 

" What is truth said \j<^sting\ Pilate, and would not wait for an 
answer." 

The Shakespeare Anniversary, 1902 

I confess I am not a very great reader of newspapers, but 
as St. George's Day of this year (April 23, 1902) was also the 
Shakespeare anniversary day, and beginning now to be honoured 
much more than in my College days, when we hardly noticed it, 
my attention was drawn to several matters akin to my book. 

(i) The Sonnets of Shakespeare were quoted in the House 
of Commons. This, I believe, is an almost unique instance. 
Stranger still, it was in connection with the Beer Bill introduced 
to help the use of barley and prevent sugar and chemical 
products being too freely used in the brewing. Mr. Fletcher 
Moulton, the well-known K.C. and expert in patents and com- 
mercial matters, delivered an eloquent and well-argued speech 
against prohibitive legislation in this matter. He asked the 
House to consider the injury that would be effected by Parlia- 
ment putting a stop to the development of industry. The 
proposal of the Bill reminded him of Shakespeare's lines, " Art 
made dumb by authority and folly controlling skill?" (Cheers.) 



368 APPENDIX 

It is to be hoped that his quotation was a httle more accurate 
than the above, otherwise he certainly did not deserve the 
cheers. It seems to have been a Httle bit too much for the 
reporters to grapple with, for the Times, which gives much the 
longest report, and the Daily Chronicle and many other papers, 
do not mention the quotation at all — my authorities being only 
the Daily Graphic and the Daily News, which both agree 
verbally, and consequently, I suppose, obtained the quotation 
from the same reporter. I need hardly tell lovers of the Sonnets 
that the orator was referring to the pessimistic Sonnet Lxvi. and 
the lines : 

" And art made tongue-tied by authority, 
And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill." 

But whether Mr. Fletcher Moulton uttered them correctly 
with the loving intonation of an enthusiast, or mangled them on 
the spur of the moment, it is rather a pleasing novelty to have 
the Sonnets in Parliament at all, and deserves a record. 

(2) On the same day the British Weekly in its long primer 
leading critique on Dr. Cheyne and his Encyclopcedia Biblica, or 
"The Bible in Tatters," as the paper preferred to call it, tried 
to make out that the learned D.D. was the victim of a craze, and 
that his arguments were no better than those of the Baconians. 
" We have," it says, a precise parallel to the Bacon-Shakespeare 
craze. Of course no real man of letters who knows Shakespeare 
would ever give the theory a thought. There is nothing in the 
evidence that has even the smallest force, and yet, speaking 
from a fair acquaintance wiih the books, we confidently affirm 
that the argument is far more plausible than many arguments 
used by Biblical critics ; in fact, if the advocates of Bacon had 
been dealing with some book in the Bible they would have been 
enthusiastically supported by all the Professors of Leyden, by 
Dr. Cheyne, and by a good many more." 

(3) In an evening paper (same day) the following met my 
eyes : " Yesterday was Shakespeare's day, the birth day and 
death day, according to repute, of the late Mr. William Shake- 
speare, a gentleman who is stated to have been the author of a 
large number of elegant quotations. I did not, however, notice 
any one immersed in the notable tome attributed to him, and 
the city continued at its usual gallup For my part, I rose 
betimes, and thinking not of Shakespeare, contented myself 
with bacon." 



i 



APPENDIX 369 

The subject thus seems to go 

" From grave to gay, from lively to severe " ; 

and ends in a business-like manner with the following newspaper 
announcements of " Publications received " : 

The Mystery of William Shakespeare : a Summary of Evidence. 
By his Honour Judge Webb. Longmans, los. 6d. net. 

The Early Life of Lord Bacon. Newly studied by Parker 
Woodward. Gay «& Bird, 2s. 6d. net. 

Altogether the Shakespeare Anniversary Day of 1902 was 
the most notable one that I remember. 

The Author's own Curio 
His Solution of the Famous Expression — 

Swan of Avon 

I have at end of Chapter VI. referred ironically to a 
Baconian solution of the well-known words Swan of Avon, for, 
seriously speaking, I cannot accept the Cheltenham solution. But 
if we may allow our imagination sometimes to lift us from terra 
firma into the realms of hypothesis, I would rather search for 
the solution among the Swans which Bacon mentions in his 
De Atigmeniis, lib. 2, cap. vii., and which he had taken from 
Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Bk. xxxv. 14. I allow myself in imagi- 
nation to overhear Ben Jonson and Francis Bacon discussing 
together the rough draft of the famous vestibule of the 1623 
folio. " What title shall I give him ? " says the obliging Jonson. 
*'0h," says the great man of mystery, "call him the Swan of 
Avon, for he flew away from London to his native Avon with 
my medal in his mouth, and he is the swan who is to take it 
to the ' temple consecrated to immortality.' But the medal has 
my name and cipher impressed on it all the time, if people would 
only look in the right place." 

What Bacon says about the swans is as follows : " He 
[Ariosto] feigns that at the end of the thread of every man's 
life, there hangs a little medal or collar {moni/e) on which his 
name is stamped ; and that Time waits upon the shears of 
Atropos, and as soon as the thread is cut, snatches the medals, 
carries them off, and presently throws them into the river Lethe ; 

Z A 



370 APPENDIX 

and about the river there are many birds flying up and down, 
who catch the medals, and after carrying them round and round 
in their beak a little while, let them fall into the river; only 
there are some swans which if they get a medal with a name, 
immediately carry it off to a temple consecrated to immortality." * 

* Spedding, Bacoii's Works, iv. 307. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Abbott, Dr., and the squabble between 
Bacon and Coke, 41 ; and Lady Anne 
Bacon's complaints against Perez and 
Francis Bacon's male servants, 51 ; 
his Bacon and Essex, ib. ; his solution 
of Bacon's character, 63, 258 ; and 
Bacon's humour, 127 ; and Bacon's 
style, 332 

Actresses, absence of, from the Eliza- 
bethan stage, 61 

Adagia, Erasmus's, account in, of the 
"Gardens of Adonis," 69 

Adonis, the counterfeit of Southampton 
in the Sonnets, 57; the "gardens" 
of, 69 ; of the Sonnets, 137 

Advancement of learning, Bacon's, and 
Sonnet cxxv. , 233 ; his remarks on 
poetry in, 268 ; difference between 
Bacon's views expressed in the edition 
of 1605 and those in the revised one 
of 1623, 269. 

Advice to Queen Elisabeth, Bacon's, and 
the Pallas - Shake - speare question , 
291 

Alasco, Alberto, honour paid to, at 
Oxford, 2ig 

Alleyn, the actor-manager, allusions 
to, in the Sonnets, 220 ; his silence as 
to Shakespeare, 235 ; and the author- 
ship of Richard II., 324 

Alts Well That Etids Well, date of the 
publication of, 346 

Alma Mater, the Aberdeen, a writer in, 
and the authorship of Bacon's Essays, 

367 

A Lover's Complaint, suggestive pas- 
sages in, of Bacon's authorship, 58 

Andrewes, Bishop, and Bacon's author- 
ship, 271 ; Bacon's view on a man's 
writings expressed to him, 304 

Angelo, Michael, his relation to Tom- 
maso de' Cavalieri a parallel to the 
attitude of the author of the Sonnets 
towards William Herbert, 257 

Anthologia Polyglotta, Dr. Wellesley's, 
71 

Antonio and Mellida, Marston's, 30 

" Apologetical Dialogue," the, prohibi- 
tion of, 88 ; vicious allusions in, 89 

Apology Concerrting the late Earl of 
Essex, Bacon's 141, i88 ; and his 
travels and studies, 208 



Apophthegms, Bacon's, proof of his 
philosophic spirit in, 105 

Arcadia, Sidney's, and the Sonnets, 
143, 2or 

Archer, William, and the " Dark Lady," 
146 

Arena, the, opinions of distinguished 
men in, on Shakespeare-Bacon prob- 
lem, 118 

"Aretine," the appellation, applied to 
Bacon, 24 ; applied to Nash, 25 

Aristotle, the policy of, imitated by 
Bacon, 322 

Art of Poesie, Puttenham's, 30 

Ashurst, R. L. , his remarks on W. H, 
Edwards's Shaksper not Shakespeare^ 
282 

Astrophel and Stella, Sidney's, traces of 
similiarity between, and some of the 
Sonnets, 202 

As You Like It, and Vincento Saviolo's 
Book, 186 ; the disguise of Rosalind 
in, 263 ; alleged self-revelation of the 
author in the character of Jacques, 
327 ; date of the publication of, 346 

Aubrey, John, the value of his literary 
records, 36 

Authors and Printers in Elizabethan 
days, 343 

Avisa, Willobie's, called in, 15 ; date of 
its entry at Stationers' Hall, 290 ; in- 
terest taken in Liicrece by the author, 
291 

Bacon, Anthony, his intimacy with An- 
tonio Perez, 44 ; letters to, from Lady 
Anne, complaining of behaviour of 
Francis Bacon's male servants, 49 

Bacon, Francis, monogram of, in dedi- 
cation to Rape of Lucrece, 3, 4 ; his 
signature to his letters written to Lord 
and Lady Burghley, 5 ; his author- 
ship of the Shakespeare Poems known 
to Marston and Hall, 11, 12 et seq. ; 
known to contemporaries to be the 
author of Venus and Adonis, 14 ; the 
"Labeo" of Marston and Hall, 17, 
20 ; and the cynic of Hall's Satires, 
18 ; his motto, 21 ; and the appellation 
"Aretine," 24; his early licence of 
love, 25 ; scandals about, ib. ; the au- 
thor of the Shakespearian Poems and 



374 



INDEX 



Bacon, Francis — continued 
Sonnets, 29 ; allusions to, in Marston's 
Satires, 29-31 ; his connection with 
the "scandal" of the Sonnets, 35; 
John Aubrey and his moral character, 
36 ; and the treatment of official re- 
cords, 38; his connection with masques 
at Gray's Inn, and devices for the Earl 
of Essex, 38, 276 ; a great literary fab- 
ricator, 39 ; peculiarities of his literary 
life, 38, 39 ; his squabble with At- 
torney-General Coke, 40-42 ; protec- 
tion of, by Cecil, 41 ; the youth of, 
43 ; his associates, ib. , 78, 88 ; letter 
to, from a Mr. Standen, 45 ; letters 
written by him for others, 47 ; his want 
of authority over his male servants, 
48 ; reason why he concealed his au- 
thorship of Venus and Adonis, 49 ; 
pecuniary difficulties of, 49 ; his in- 
timacy with Mary Fitton, 55 ; evil 
reports of, 62 ; Pope's false judgment 
on, 63 ; Dr. Abbott's solution of his 
character, ib. ; the last five years of 
his life, 64; and the "gardens of 
Adonis," 70; his power of paraphras- 
ing other men's phraseology, 73 ; his 
character as portrayed by Sir Toby 
Matthews, 75 ; his qualifications for 
the authorship of the Shakespeare 
Plays and Poems, 76 ; Ben Jonson's 
early attitude towards, 81 ; portrayed 
in Ben Jonson's Silent Wo7nan, 84 ; 
in the Poetaster, 85 ; his dislike of his 
profession, 88 ; his connection with 
Richard II., 89, 155, 166, 180, 324; 
his predicament at Essex's trial, 90 ; 
under a cloud, ib. ; his friendship with 
Ben Jonson, 93; one of his favourite 
literary devices, 112 ; as we know him, 
120; date of his greater works, ib. ; 
on love, 121 ; his early levity and his 
later life, 123 ; and the love scenes in 
the Shakespeare Plays, ib. ; a natural 
humorist, 127 ; his intimacy with 
Southampton, Pembroke, and Essex, 
129 ; and the " Procreation Sonnets," 
136 ; proof that he wrote Sonnets, 141 ; 
his alienation from Southampton, 142 ; 
a remarkable letter from, to South- 
ampton, ib. ; in his early Gray's Inn 
days, 14s ; probability of his author- 
ship of VenjiS and Adonis, 145 ; his 
opportunities of meeting Herbert and 
Mary Fitton, 148 ; his intimacy with 
Mary Fitton, 149; depicted in The 
Silent Woman, 152 ; allusions to, by 
Ben Jonson, 155 ; iiis views as to the 
value of our plantations in America, 
160 ; a true patriot, ib ; depicted in 
Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, 161 ; his 
correspondence with Essex and South- 
ampton, i6g ; the probable author of 
Pembroke's letter from prison to Cecil, 
171 ; and of Essex's letters, 173 ; poem 



Bacon, Francis — cotiiinued 

composed by him when Essex was in 
danger of losing the Queen's favour, 
176 ; his letter to Lord Essex, 177 ; 
his breach with Southampton, 178 ; 
his letter to Southampton just before 
his release from prison, ib. ; his per- 
sonal relations with Southampton, 
179 ; and the trial of Essex, ib. ; 
reason why he never mentions Shake- 
speare or Jonson, ib. ; his reason for 
avoiding open correspondence with 
Southampton, 180; on his own literary 
powers, 181 ; similarity between his 
letter to Lord Burghley and Sonnet 11., 
181; and the "Sonnet to Florio," 
182 ; his connection with Florio, 185 ; 
and As You Like It, 186 ; poems attri- 
butable to, 187 ; and the " Farnaby " 
poem, 188 ; his identities of thought 
with Shakespeare, 189 ; his five con- 
cealed poems, ib. ; his opportunities 
for visiting Italy, 200 ; and Sidney's 
Arcadia, 201 ; and Astrophel and 
Stella, 202 ; at Twickenham Lodge, 
204 ; the " northern journey " of, 207, 
217 ; dedication of his " Travels and 
Studies," 208 ; his period of depres- 
sion, 210 ; his personal relationship 
with Southampton , 210; absence of cor- 
respondence between him and South- 
ampton, 211 ; nature of his relationship 
with Southampton, 213; his tardy 
success in mounting the ladder of am- 
bition, 213 ; and the threatening of his 
life, 218 ; and Bruno's philosophy, 
ib. ; possible connection between him 
and Bruno, 219 ; and Bruno's visit to 
Oxford, 219, 229 ; and the " eclipse" 
of the Queen, 225 ; odium incurred by 
him through taking part in the prose- 
cution of Essex, 227 ; and Italian free- 
thinkers, 229 ; his intimacy with Sir 
Fulke Greville, 230; his friendship 
with Sir Thomas Heneage, 234 ; pos- 
sible reasons why he never mentions 
Shakespeare, ib. ; his theory of the 
nature of fire, 243 ; probably the writer 
of Sonnets for Southampton and Her- 
bert to send to their lady-loves, 249 ; 
his confirmed habit of writing letters 
for other people, 249 ; Ben Jonson's 
earlier and later view about him, 250 ; 
parallelisms between his acknowledged 
works and the Plays of Shakespeare, 
251 ; the question whether he had a 
mistress, 253 ; his misogynism, 255 ; 
the mystery of his real character, 258 ; 
Mr. Abbott's view of his life, ib. ; his 
prayers found after his death, 259 ; 
maligned by Pope, ib. ; religious calm 
of his later life, 260; his " Confession 
of Faith," ib. ; his wild oats, 261 ; 
the chosen companions of the early 
middle period of his life, 262 ; effect 



INDEX 



375 



Bacon, Francis — continued 

on his personal character of the ill 
odour in which he found himself before 
and after the trial of Essex, ib. ; a 
clue to the date when the adverse 
rumours against him were strongest, 
ib. ; his connection with the authorship 
of Tke Tzuo Gentlemen of I'erona, 264 ; 
his reason for concealing his author- 
ship of Shakespeare, 265 ; his mistress, 
266 ; as a poet, 267 ; true estimate 
of, ib. ; his intimacy with Sir Tobie 
Matthew, ib. ; the period of his life 
about which so little is known, 268, 
293 ; his concealment of his real atti- 
tude to poetry and the drama, 268 ; 
his views in later life with regard to 
poetry, 269 ; the friends to whom he 
lifted off the mask, 271 ; his early 
genius, ib. ; the period when he was 
laying the foundation of the Plays 
and Poems, 272 ; his admiration of 
Sir Philip Sidney, 272 ; evidence of his 
love of poetry, 273 ; his love for litera- 
ture anterior to his passion for science, 
274; seventeenth-century testimonies to 
the intimate relation between him and 
poetry, ib. ; his connection with Pallas. 
281 et seq. ; reason why he called 
himself Shakespeare, 285 ; reason why 
he used the name of Shakespeare, 290 ; 
evidence of his connection with Shak- 
sper, 291 ; his unparalleled activity, 
293; his commonplace books, ib. ; his 
belief in himself, ib. ; his estimation 
of his later philosophical works, 295 ; 
his magnificence on the day of his 
wedding, 296 ; his far-reaching intel- 
lectual aspirations, 297 ; his facilities 
for producing the Shakespeare plays, 
&c. , 298 ; rapidity of his work, 299; 
his peculiar facility for improving other 
people's language, ib. ; the party in 
the Church of England to which he 
belonged, 299 ; his first pleading in 
the King's Bench, 300 ; his enormous 
vocabulary, ib. ; unique words used 
by him, 301 ; the classification of his 
philosophical works, 302 ; his self- 
eflacement in literary matters, 303 ; 
the view he held on a man's writings, 
304 ; his private friends when at Gray's 
Inn, 308 ; under his Ovidian domino, 
310; his habit of constant revision, 
315, 345 ; reason why he concealed his 
identity, 320 et seq. ; his lofty philan- 
thropy, 327 ; parallel between his 
literary style and that of Milton, 331 ; 
his view upon the permanency of the 
English language, 333 ; reason of his 
close alliance with Essex, 334 ; his 
genius, 335 ; the reason why he did 
not acknowledge his dramas either by 
his will or before his death, 338 ; the 
value in which he held George Her- 



Bacon, Francis — continued 
bert's judgment, 339 ; his renunciation 
of poetry, ib. ; contrast between his 
life and his writings, 366 

Bacon, Lady Anne, complaint of against 
Lord Essex, 43, 79, 240 ; her alarm 
at Bacon's intimacy with Perez, 44, 
79 ; and the dangers of London life, 
ib. , 309; the letters of, 49; and the 
sale of " markes," 50; and Francis 
Bacon's religious views, 299 ; and her 
publications, 320 ; her objection to 
acting and writing, 323 ; to riotous 
living, 330 

Bacon, Sir Nicholas, and the use of a 
contemporary mask to hide his author- 
ship, 320 

Bacon-Shakespeare Question, the, the 
evidence of dialect on, 77 ; Sir Theo- 
dore Martin on, 116 ; Professor A. R. 
Wallace on, 118; Sir Henry Irving 
on, 124; and the Earls of Essex, 
Pembroke, and Southampton, 129 ; 
curiosities of the literature of, 353 

Bacon vexsMS Shakespeare, Edwin Reed's, 
130 

Baconians, the, their neglect of the 
Sonnets and Plays, i ; their view of 
the scholarship of the author of the 
Shakespeare Plays and Sonnets, 68; 
and the Pallas-Shake-speare evidence, 
281 et seq. ; the extreme, 311 ; and the 
British Weekly, 368 

Bacon's works, the theory that Shake- 
speare might have written, 365 

Banbury, Earl of, the paternity case of, 
238 (note) 

Bandello's Tales, male impersonators 
in, 264 

Bartholomew Fair, Jonson's exposition 
of the triangular love-picture of Bacon, 
Southampton, and the " Dark Lady" 
in, 161 

Baynes, Professor, and Shakespeare's 
familiarity with Ovid, 92 ; and the 
authorship of the Sonnet to Florio, 182 

Beeching, Rev. Professor, and parallels 
to the Platonism of the Sonnets, 257 

" Better angel, the," the identity of, 247 

Birch's Memoirs, and Antonio Perez, 51 

Blackie, John Stuart, and Bacon's poetic 
faculty, 269 

Blackwood's Magazine, a writer in, and 
the "Rival Poets," 221; and the 
identity of Hews of Sonnet xx. , 357 

Blount, Edward, and the Dedication and 
Address over the signaturesof Heminge 
and Condell, 113; his knowledge of 
Bacon's authorship, 271 

Bodley, Sir Thomas, and Bacon's later 
life, 123 

Bonstetten, the Swiss, friendship of, with 
the poet Gray, 257 

Bowden, Father, and Shakespeare's 
religion, 97 



376 



INDEX 



Boy-actors, the earliest mention of, 6i ; 
reference to, in Hamlet, 62, 330 ; and 
court gallants, ib. 

Brandes, George, and the Italian scholar- 
ship of the author of the Shakespeare 
Plays, 72 ; and Bacon's visit to Italy, 
200 ; and parallels to the Platonism 
of the Sonnets, 257 

British lVeeify,the, and the Baconians, 
368 

Brown, Charles Armytage, and the 
Herbert theory of the Sonnets, 138 

Bruno, Giordano, traces of his philosophy 
in the Sonnets, 218, 226, 229 ; in Lon- 
don, 219; at Oxford, ib. , 229; the 
date of his works, 230 

Brydges, Mistress, and the Earl of Essex, 

79 
Burbage, John, andWilliam Shakespeare , 

77 

Burghley, Lord, favourite cipher device 
of, 8 ; his objection to waste of time 
over Sonnets, &c. , 86 ; similarity be- 
tween a letter to, from Bacon, and 
Sonnet 11., 181 ; and Giordano Bruno, 
219 

Burke's Bible, 21 

Bushell, Thomas, 52 

Butler, Samuel, and the Sonnets, 32 ; 
and the "Scandal," 33; and Mr. 
Sidney Lee, 247 



Calendar 0/ State Papers, letter in, from 
Ben jonson to Lord Salisbury, iii 

Campion, Thomas, and Bacon's poetic 
faculty, 274 

Canaidos, use of the term by Marston, 

25 

"Canopy Sonnet," the. See Sonnet 
cxxv. 

Capell and the "lameness" of Shake- 
speare, 223 

Capias utlegatum, the old legal term, 
42 ; its reference to Bacon, 263 

Carew family, projected alliance of, with 
William Herbert, 203 

Cecil, Mr. Secretary, two letters to, 41 ; 
his protection of Bacon, 41 ; strik- 
ing phrases in the letter to, from 
William Herbert, shortly after his re- 
lease from the Fleet Prison, 170, 313 ; 
and the scandal about Mary Fitton, 
238 

Chapman, reference to, in the Sonnets, 
209, 220 

Characteristics, Professor Minto's, and 
the authorship of the Sonnet to Florio, 
184 

Children of the Chapel Stript and 
Whipt, The, 61 

Church, Deaa, and Bacon's self-asser- 
tion, 295 

Churchyard, T., contemporary court 
satire by, 150 



Ciphers, biliteral, 7 ; and politicians of 

the Essex and Burghley parties, 8 ; 

Anthony and Francis Bacon experts 

in, ib. ; varied kinds of, ib. 
Clarke, J. Freeman, and the theory that 

Shakespeare might have written 

Bacon's works, 365 
Cobham, Lord, his objection to the 

introduction of Sir John Oldcastle 

into Henry IV., ■yi2, 
Cogitata et Visa, Bacon's, and the 

question of Bacon's lack of time for 

play-writing, 299 
Coke, Attorney-General, his squabble 

with Bacon, 40-42. 
Colours of Good and Evil, Bacon's 

Essay on, and the "woman coloured 

ill" of the Sonnets, 246 
Concealed authorship in Elizabethan 

days, 340 
"Confession of Faith," Bacon's, nobility 

of, 260 ; self-revelation in, 327 
Copyright in Shakespeare's time, 326 
Coriolanus, Baconian simile in, 241 

(;note) 
Critoy, Monsieur, authorship of the 

letter to, 320 
Cryptograms, worthlessness of, 7 
" Cynthia," The address to, authorship 

of, 174, 175 
Cynthia's Revels, attacks on Marston 

and Dekker in, 82 



Damon and Pythias, in Jonson's 
Bartholomew Fair, 161 

Daniel, Samuel, and the Sonnet to 
Florio, 184; reference to, in the 
Sonnets, 209, 220 

" Dark Lady," the, Sonnets referring to, 
131, 254; identified by Mr. Tyler 
as Mistress Fitton, 132 ; the last 
Sonnets to, 145 ; her intrigues, 146 ; 
evidence in the Newdigate documents 
identifying her with Mistress Fitton, 
146 ; the chronology of the episode of, 
195; allusions to, in Sonnets cxxvii. 
to CLii., 235; moral character of, 239 ; 
Massey and the love of the author of 
the Sonnets for her, 254 

Davies of Hereford, John, testimony 
borne by him in a sonnet to Bacon 
of Bacon's poetic faculty, 275 

De Augmentis Scientiarum, Bacon's 
remarks in, on Poetry, 339 ; the 
Swans mentioned in, and the expres- 
sion " Swan of Avon," 369 

Defence of Contraries , The, the trans- 
lator of, and the Bacons, 291 

Defiance to Enoy, Hall's, 20 

Dekker, Thomas, and the War of the 
Theatres, 82 ; his Satiromastix, 83 

Delia, Daniel's, dedication of, 192; a 
model for the form of verse used in 
the Sonnets, 203 



INDEX 



377 



De moribus interpretis. Bacon's refer- 
ence in, to the habit of working under 
a mask, 322 

Device of the Indian Prince, The, simi- 
larity of, to the Sonnets, 187 

Devices for the Earl of Essex, Bacon's 
connection with, 38; descriptions of, by 
Rowland White, ib. ; evidence in, of 
Bacon's poetic faculty, 276 ; remini- 
scences in, of the Sonnets of Hatnlet, 
the early Plays, and of Promus, 278 ; 
speeches of the Hermit in, 277, 332 

Diana, Montemayor's, male impersona- 
tors in, 264 ; its connection with the 
authorship of the Shakespeare Plays, 
ib. ; date of its translation into 
English, 265 ; English MS. versions 
of, ib. 

Digges, Leonard, and the Stratford 
monument to Shakespeare, 105 

Direy, M. Louis, and the Sonnets, 363 

Dixon, Hepworth, on Bacon's magni- 
ficence at his wedding, 296 ; and the 
early part of Bacon's life, 318 

Dowden, Professor, and Judge Webb's 
Baconian errors, 22 ; his triangular 
duel with Professor Tyrrell and Webb, 
109 ; and the Earl of Southampton, 
138 

Drake, Dr., and the individual to whom 
the majority of the Shakespeare Son- 
nets were addressed, 131 

Droeshout engraving of Shakespeare, 
the, 98, loi ; Ben Jonson's address 
to the reader facing, 354 

Dyer, Sir Edward, alleged dedication of 
Sonnet xx. to, 360 



Edmonds, Charles, discovery by, 192 

Edney, or Enney, Francis Bacon's ser- 
vant, 49 ; identity of, 52 

Edwards, W. H., his effort to prove 
that Shakespeare could not have 
written the plays attributed to him, 
281 

Elizabeth, Queen, dinner to, at Oxford, 
139 ; pleasures and recreations of, 
144 ; allusions to, in the Sonnets, 225, 
226 ; her suspicion of Richard II. , 324 

Elizabethan age, the, one of treasons 
and conspiracies, 324 ; authors and 
printers in, 343 

Elizabethan court, masques and revels 
of, 240 

Elizabethan London, vice in, 216 

Elizabethan maids of honour, 237 ; 
morality of, 240 

Elizabethan stage, the, character of, 62 

Emery, Abbas |ac. Andr., and Bacon's 
religious faith, 261 

England's Helicon, the address to 
" Cynthia " in, 174 

Envoy of Sonnets and poems, the, pecu- 
liar significance of, 353 



Epictetus, Healey's, dedication of, 193 

Epigrams, Ben Jonson's, dedication 
of, 6 

Erasmus and the " Gardens of Adonis," 
69 

Essays, Bacon's, proof of his philosophi- 
cal spirit in, 105 ; date of their publi- 
cation, 120 ; successive alterations and 
revisions of, 315 ; the first book which 
bore the name of Francis Bacon on 
the title-page, 325 ; the dedication 
of, 32s 

Essex, the Earl of, and devices, 39 ; his 
friendship with Bacon, 43 ; his in- 
trigues with Queen Elizabeth's maids 
of honour, ib. ; Lady Anne Bacon's 
complaint against, 43 ; procures a pen- 
sion for Antonio Perez, 44 ; amours 
of, 79 ; the trial of, and Bacon, 90; a 
hostile influence to Bacon and the 
Cecils, 137 ; rebellious uprising of, 
142 ; scant allusions to, in the Sonnets, 
166 ; references to, in the plays of 
Shakespeare, 166 ; execution of, 167 ; 
no evidence that he knew Shakespeare, 
167 ; his friendship with Bacon, 168 ; 
his correspondence with Bacon and 
Cecil, 169, 172 ; resemblance of 
thought in his letters and two of the 
Sonnets, 173 ; his letter to the Earl of 
Rutland, ib. ; letter from Bacon to, 
177 ; mystery of the Sonnets known to, 
ib. ; beheaded, 178 ; the part taken 
by Bacon in his trial, 179 ; dedication 
to, of Bacon's "Travels and Studies," 
208 ; contemporary evidence that he 
had literary work composed for him 
by others, 249 ; and the remarkable 
paper discovered in the Lambeth 
Collection, 287 

Essex's Device befo7-e the Queen, mention 
of the "Gardens of Adonis" in, 70; 
letter in, to the Queen, 288. See also 
Device 

Essex Treason Case, the, breach in 
friendship between Bacon and South- 
ampton caused by, 178 

Examen de la Philosophic de Bacon, 
Count Joseph de Maistre's admission 
in, of Bacon's poetic genius, 273 



Farewell to Folly, Greene's, and con- 
cealed authorship, 340 
Farmer, Dr., and the identification of 

H. S. in Florio's A Worlde of 

Wordes, 184 
" Farnaby " poem, the, authorship of, 

188, 336 
Father Hubbard's Tales, Thomas Mid- 

dletons, and rich young squires from 

the country, 308 « 

Faunt, Nicholas, his complaint of 

Francis Bacon's refusal to see him at 

his chambers, 321 



378 



INDEX 



Ferrers, the lawyer, and dramatic 
pageants, 344 ; his Mirrors for 
Magistrates, ib. 

Field, Richard, date of his publication 
of Venus and Adonis, 266 

Figure Anagram, the, 354 

Fitton, Mistress, her acquaintanceship 
with Shakespeare, 9 ; her possible 
connection with the "scandal" of 
the Sonnets, 55 ; and William Herbert, 
55 ; identified by Mr. Tyler as the 
"Dark Lady" of the Sonnets, 132; 
the number of people who believe her 
to be the " Dark Lady," 146 ; Bacon's 
intimacy with, 149 ; allegation that 
she was Shakespeare's mistress, 151 ; 
and William Herbert, 156 ; birth of 
a child by, 156 ; Mr. Tyler's re- 
searches into her history, 163 ; her 
marriage with Captain Polwhele, 164 ; 
Sarrazin's view that she is not the 
lady of the Sonnets or early Plays, 
195 ; and the question of the robbery 
of the mistress of the author of the 
Sonnets, 214 ; apparent allusion to, 
in Sonnet cxxi. , 228 ; her liaison with 
the Earl of Pembroke, 238 ; MS. 
pedigree of, 240 ; improbability that 
she was Bacon's mistress, 253 ; pos- 
sible reason why she went to meet 
Pembroke with her clothes tucked up 
like a man, 264 

Fitton family, the, punning line on 
the monument to, 246 

Fletcher, LL. D. , Giles, sonnet by, 
248 ; parallel between his authorship 
and Bacon's, 344 

Florio, John, and the Earl of South- 
ampton, 183, 185 ; dedication to, 193 

Florio, the Sonnet to, probable author 
of, 182 ; the date of, 203 

Folio of 1623, the, passage withdrawn 
from, 58 ; mystery surrounding the 
production of, loi ; an immense work 
of revision, 315, 316; the preparation 
of, for publication, and IBacon's re- 
nunciation of poetry, 340 

Forest of Fancy, the, the author of, and 
the writing of poems for others, 249 

Furness, Howard, and the dates of 
Shakespeare's Plays, 140 



Gallup, Mrs., cryptograms of, 7, 
356 ; and the parentage of Bacon, 
216 ; and the reason why Bacon 
concealed his authorship of the works 
of Shakespeare, 265 

"Gardens of Adonis," the, allusion to, 
in Henry IV., 69 

Garnett, Richard, C. B. , and the Baco- 
nian authorship, 272 

Gascoigne, Geor^je, and the writing of 
Sonnets for others, 249 ; his comedy 
The Supposes, 344 ; his career, 345 



Gawsworth, monument to the Fitton 
family at, 246 

Genius, the power of, 126 

German Shakespeare Society, the, and 
criticism of the Shakespeare Plays 
and Sonnets, 243 

Gcsta Grayorum, Francis Bacon's, 17, 
18; evidence in, of Bacon being 
brought into public connection with 
Shakespeare, 291 

Gibson Papers, rough drafts in, of 
speeches in the devices in Bacon's 
writing, 39 

Gray, the poet, friendship of, for Bon- 
stetten, 257 ; his letters to Nicholls 
and Bonstetten parallels to the feel- 
ings phrased in the Sonnets, ib. 

Great Assizes at Parnassus, George 
Wither's, and Bacon's poetic faculty, 
274 

Greatest Birth of Time, Bacon's, 210 ; 
his magnificence in, 295 

Greene, Robert, his jealousy of Shake- 
speare, 124 

Greville, Sir Fulke, 96 ; Essex's letter 
of advice to, 174 ; and Giordano 
Bruno, 219 ; his intimacy with Bacon, 
230 

Grosart, Dr., and Hall's poems, 16; 
and the interpretation of The Phoenix 
and the Turtle, 167 



Hall, Joseph, his -use of " Labeo," 
14 ; his literary war with Marston, 
ib. ; burning of his Satires, 15 ; his 
VirgidemicE, ib. ; Bacon's authorship 
of Venus and Adonis known to, ib. ; 
his attack on " Labeo," 20; a moral 
satirist, 24 ; allusions to Shakespearian 
drama in his satires, 27 ; his know- 
ledge of Bacon's authorship, 271 

Hall, W., suggested as W. H. by Sidney 
Lee, 151 ; name of, in front of the 
Shakespeare Sonnets, 192 

HaUiwell - Phillips, H. O., and the 
theatres in Bacon's days, 328 

Hamlet, Marston's imitation of, 22 ; lines 
struck from, in the last revision of the 
Plays, 58 ; reference to boy-actors in, 
62 ; French scholarship of the author 
of, 73 ; the date of, a clue to the date 
of the adverse rumours about Bacon, 
262 ; the personality of Bacon in, 310 ; 
revision of, 317 ; and boy-actors, 330 ; 
and Plato's Republic, 361 

Harris, T. L. , parallel between his 
literary history and that of Bacon, 279 

Harvey, Sir William, and W. H., 197 

Hatton, Lady, her contemplated mar- 
riage with Wm. Herbert, 149 

Hayward, Dr., allusion to in The Silent 
IVoman, 155 

Hazlitt, W. C. , his Shakespear {sic), 59 ; 
his knowledge of Elizabethan litera- 



INDEX 



379 



Hazlitt, W. C. — continued 
ture, ib. ; and Shakespeare's journey 
to London when a boy, ib. ; and 
Jonson's " eulogy " on Shakespeare in 
the Poetaster, ib. ; and "the scandal," 
60 ; and the author of Venus and 
Adonis, ib. ; and Thorpe's estimate 
of Shakespeare, 193 ; and Bacon's 
poetic faculty, 269 ; and the incident 
of Yorick's skull in Hamlet, 318 

Heminge and Condell, the Dedication 
and Address over the signature of, 112 

Heneage, Sir Thomas, and Bacon's pro- 
motion, 205, 234 ; his connection with 
the theatres, 234 

Henry IV., Lord Cobham and the char- 
acter of Sir John Oldcastle in, 323 

Henry IV., Dr. Hay ward's, the dedica- 
tion in to Essex, 324 

Henry V., French scholarship of the 
author of, 73 ; references to Essex in, 
166 

Henty VI. , scholarship displayed by the 
author of, 69 

Henry, M. Fernand, and the Sonnets, 

363 

Henslowe, his theatre, 233 ; his silence 
as to Shakespeare, 235 

Henslowe's Diary, reference in to Dekker 
and Chettle's Troilus and Cressida, 83 

Herbert, George, evidence borne by to 
Bacon's poetic faculty, 274 ; the value 
Bacon placed on his judgment, 339 

Herbert, William, Earl of Pembroke, 
acquaintanceship of, with Shakespeare, 
9, 129 ; friendship with Bacon, 43 ; 
and Mary Fitton, 55 ; date of his first 
intimacy with Shakespeare, 133 ; his 
presence at the dinner given at Oxford 
to Queen Elizabeth, 139 ; his liaison 
with Mistress Fitton, 146, 238 ; one of 
the three Wills, 146, 236 ; his visit to 
London in 1595, 148 ; marriage con- 
templated between him and Lady 
Hatton, 149, 262 ; his frequent ap- 
pearances at court, ib. ; depicted in 
The Silent Woman, 152 ; and the 
blandishments of Mary Fitton, 156 ; 
Sonnet by, ib. ; one of the true founders 
of the United States, 160 ; lack of 
evidence of friendship with Shake- 
speare, 165 ; analogies with the Sonnets 
in his letter to Cecil, 170, 313 ; resem- 
blance between the wording of the 
letter and that of the Sonnets, 171 ; 
dedication to, 193 ; project of marrying 
him into the Carew family, 203 ; the 
fugitive in Sonnet cxliii., 242 

Herand, John A., and the Shakespeare 
Sonnets, 131; and the "two loves" 
of the author of the Sonnets, 362 
' Herbertites," the, their battle with the 
" Southamptonites," 8 ; and the inti- 
macy between Shakespeare and young 
Herbert, 133 



Hero and Leander, Marlowe's, dedica- 
tion of, 193 

Hertzberg, Herr, and the original source 
of the last two Sonnets, 70 

Hews, " Mr.," the identity of, in Sonnet 
XX. , 356 et seq. 

History of Felix and Pkilomena, The, 
the performance of, and the date of 
the production of The Two Gentlemen 
of Verona, 264 

History of King Hemy VII., allusion in, 
to treatment of official records, 38 ; 
allusion in, to the "eclipse" of the 
Queen, 226; allusion in, to Bacon's 
theory of the nature of fire, 244 

Howard, Lady Mary, and the Earl of 
Essex, 79 

Howard, Lord Henry, Bacon's reference 
to the threat on his life in his letter 
to, 218 

H. S. , in Florio's Worlde of Wordes, 
identification of, 184 

Hughes, Mrs., and female parts on the 
stage, 360 

Hughes, William, and the Hews of Son- 
net XX., 358; description of him in 
Sonnet Liii., ib. ; his leaving Shake- 
speare's company for AUeyn's, 358, 

359 
Hughes, William, the musician, 360 



Iliad, Chapman's, allusions to, in the 
Sonnets, 220 

Informer, The expression, used in Son- 
net cxxv. , 56, 232 

Instauratio Magna, Bacon's, proof of 
his philosophical spirit in, 105; and 
his earlier aspirations, 270 

Interpretation of Nature, The, Bacon's, 
autobiographical passage in, 181 

"Invention," the word, significance of 
its use by Bacon, 328 

Irving, Sir Henry, and the Bacon- 
Shakespeare question, 124 

" Isham Reprints," The, a dedication 
in, 192 

Italian free thinkers. Bacon's fondness 
for meeting, 229 

Italian Renaissance culture, the refined 
Platonism of, 257 

Italian morals, imitated by patrons of 
the theatrical companies, 329 

Italian Sonnets, and the study of Plato, 
214 

Italy, improbability of Shakespeare 
having visited, 200 ; Bacon's oppor- 
tunities for visiting, ib. 



Jaggard and the printing of Sonnet 
cxxxviii., 241 

Jonson, Ben, ingenious prevarications 
of, 29 ; his early attitude towards 
Shakespeare and Bacon, 81 ; his in- 



38o 



INDEX 



Jonson, Ben — continued 

timacy with Pembroke, ib. ; bis sati- 
rical comments on actors having arms 
from Heralds' College, ib. ; concealed 
personalities in his plays, 82 ; his 
enmity and friendship with Marston, 
83 ; his friendship with Bacon, 93 ; 
his view of Shakespeare, 94 ; his re- 
spect for Shakespeare's genius, ib. , 97 ; 
misleading character of his laudatory 
verses of Shakespeare, 98 ; his re- 
conciliation to Bacon, 101 ; Shake- 
spearians and his testimony, iii ; 
letter from, to Lord Salisbury, iii ; 
allusions by, to Southampton and 
Bacon, 155 ; his knowledge of the 
scandal of the town, 157 ; his know- 
ledge of Mary Fitton's character, 157 ; 
mystery of the Sonnets known to, 
177, 180 ; his earlier and later view 
about Bacon, 250 ; the reason why he 
did not divulge Bacon's authorship of 
Shakespeare, 266; the "real Shake- 
speare" of, 315 ; the money made by 
him over his Plays, 326 ; and his op- 
ponents in the war of the theatres, 
329 ; his address to the reader facing 
the Droeshout engraving, 354 ; his 
opportunities for culture, 365 

Keats, what is known of, 125 ; his works 
not a parallel case to those of Shake- 
speare, ib. 

Kemp, Will, one of the three Wills, 
146, 150, 236 ; dedication of his Nine 
daies Wonder, 150 

Kind Hartes Dreatne, Chettle's, refer- 
ences in, to topical jests, 62 

King Lear, revision of, 317 

Knight, Charles, and Bacon's poetic 
faculty, 269 

Knights of the Helmet, the order of 
the, 17 

Knollys, Sir William, the Informer of 
Sonnet CXXV. , 56, 232 ; his admiration 
for Mary Fitton, 146, 232, 237 ; one 
of the three Wills, 146, 236 ; and 
Queen Elizabeth's Maids of Honour, 
237 

" Labeo," the character, in Marston's 
Pigmalion' s Image, X2.etseq. ; in Hall's 
Satires, 13 et seq. ; his identity, ib. ; 
and Bacon — one person, 17 ; in the 
Reactio, 21 

La Jessie, Jean de, Sonnet addressed by, 
to Bacon, 284; overlooked by Birch 
and Spedding, ib. ; his acquaintance 
with English court life, 285 ; clue to 
his reference to Pallas, 286 

Lee, Sidney, and ciphers in the folio 
Shakespeare, 7 ; and Shakespeare's 
acquaintanceship with Wm. Herbert 
and Mistress Fitton, g, 132 ; and the 
Earls of Pembroke and Southampton, 



Lee, Sidney — continued 

147 ; and W. H., 151 ; and The 
Phcenix and the Turtle, 167 ; and the 
three Wills in the Fortnightly Review, 
239 ; his change of opinion as to Mr. 
W. H. , 247 ; and the colour of South- 
ampton's hair, ib. ; appeal to, 249 ; 
his knowledge of Shakespeare's times, 
249 ; and copyright in Shakespeare's 
time, 326 

Leicester, Lord, with Alasco and a com- 
pany of court notables at Oxford, 219 

Letter of Advice to Queen Elizabeth, 
the, authorship of, 320 

Licia, Giles Fletcher's, Sonnet in, 248 

Life and Letters of Francis Bacon, letters 
in, accepted as Bacon's by Mr. Sped- 
ding, 171 ; and the personal relation- 
ship between Bacon and Southampton, 
210 

Life of Bacon, Montagu's, 142 

Lives of Eminent Persons, John Aubrey's, 
164 

Long Meg of Westminster, 216 

" Loose-legged Lais," the, in Marston's 
Satyres, 215 ; Dr. Brinsley Nicholson's 
suggestion as to, 216 

Lougher, Capt., and Mary Fitton, 240, 
241 

Lover's Lament, The, 145 

Love's Labour s Lost, the work of a 
highly educated genius, 29 ; signs of 
the "Dark Lady" episode in, 195; 
revision of, 196 ; date of, 199 ; in- 
timately connected with the Sonnets, 
306, 313; possibly Bacon's first dra- 
matic sketch, 309 ; revision of, 317 

Love's Martyr or Rosalind s Complaint, 
Robert Chester's, 167 

Lucrece, resemblance between the dedi- 
cationof, andSonnet xxvi. , 2, 206 ; the 
dedication of, 3, 143 ; cipher device 
at the beginning of, 4, 7, 356 ; value 
of the cipher in, asproof of authorship, 
8 ; date of the registration of, 207 ; 
date of the dedication to Southampton, 
209 ; first appearance of William Shake- 
speare in, 289 ; date of its entry at 
Stationers' Hall, 290; proof of Ba- 
conian authorship in, 305 ; the author 
of, also the author of Venus and Adonis, 
306 ; Shakespeare had no share in 
writing, 312 

Lucy, Sir Thomas, 96 

Lytton, E. Bulwer, and Bacon's poetic 
faculty, 269 



Macaulay, Thomas Babington, after- 
wards Lord, and Bacon's poetic 
faculty, 269 

Macbeth, the writing of, 317 

Magistrates' Mirror, the, 20 

Maistre, Count Joseph de, his attack on 
Bacon's philosophy, 273 



INDEX 



381 



" Man right fair, The," identity of, 247 

Manes Verulamiani , the, testimony in, 
to Bacon's poetic faculty, 275 

Markes, Francis Bacon's estate, sale 
of, 49 

Markham, Gervase, and the publication 
of his works, 343 

Marlowe, Kit, and Marston's "Tubrio," 
216 ; and the " Rival Poets," 220 

Marston, John, his use of "Labeo," 
14 ; his literary war with Hall, ib. ; 
suppression of his Pigmalion and 
Scourge of Villanie, 15 ; Bacon's 
authorship of Venus and Adonis 
known to, ib. ; his appreciation of 
Shakespeare, 22 ; a moral satirist, 24 ; 
allusion to Shakespearian drama in 
his Satyres, 27 ; allusions to Bacon in, 
29-31 ; and the War of the Theatres, 
82 ; commencement of his literary 
career, 208 ; reference to, in Sonnet 
XXXII., 209; contemporary evidence 
by him that certain aristocrats had 
literary work composed for them, 249 ; 
his knowledge of Bacon's authorship, 
271 

Martin, Sir Theodore, and the view of 
Shakespeare's contemporaries as to 
the authorship of the Shakespeare 
Plays, 116 

Masculus Partus Tetnporis, Bacon's, 218 

" Master - mistress " Sonnet. See Son- 
net XX. 

Masque of the Indian Prince, Bacon's, 

IS9 

Masques and revels at the court, and 
morality, 240 

Masques at Gray's Inn, Bacon's con- 
nection with, 38 ; descriptions of, by 
Rowland White, ib. 

Massey, Gerald, his work on the Son- 
nets, 9; and Sonnet Cix., 54; his view 
of the scholarship of the author of the 
Shakespeare Plays and Sonnets, 67 ; 
and the Earl of Southampton, 137, 
166 ; and the alleged allusions in 
Sonnet CXi. to Shakespeare's profes- 
sion as an actor, 228 (jiote) ; and 
"The Dark Lady," 255; and the 
Hews of Sonnet XX. 357 

Masson, David, and the Shakespeare 
Sonnets, 190 

Matthew, Sir Toby, his account of 
Bacon's character, 75 ; his intimacy 
with Bacon, 267 ; liis knowledge of 
Bacon's authorship, 271 ; the part 
taken by him in playing "Lord 
Essex's Device " at Cambridge, 276 

Meautys, Sir Thomas, 52 

Menaphon, Greene's, phrase used by 
Nash in his preface to, 210 

Meres, Francis, and Sonnet LV., 217; 
and The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 
264; and the Pallas - Shakespeare 
question, 292 



Midsummer Ni^ht' s Dream, A, intimate 
connection of, with the Sonnets, 306, 

313 , 

Milton's vocabulary, 72 ; his expressed 
views on love, 121 ; parallel between 
his literary style and Bacon's, 331 

Minto, Professor, and the authorship of 
the Sonnet to Florio, 182 ; and allu- 
sions to Chapman in the Sonnets, 
220 

Miracles, Literary, 279, 305 

Mirror for Magistrates, Ferrers's, the 
first English historic legend, 344 

Moll Cutpurse, 216 

Montaigne's Essays, Florio's translation 
of, 185 

Morgan, Appleton, and the provincial- 
isms in Shakespeare's Plays and 
Poems, 77 

"Mortal Moon, The," allusion to the 
eclipse of, 225 

Moulton, K. C, Mrs. Fletcher, and a 
quotation from the Sonnets, 367 

Mystery of William Shakespeare, The, 
Judge Webb's, 107 ; lucidity and 
arrangement of, 284 



Nash, branded with opprobrium in the 
Scourge of Villanie, 25 ; phrase used 
by him in his preface to Greene's 
Menaphon, 210; the nobleman ad- 
dressed in his Pierce Penilesse, 212 

New Atlantis, The, Bacon's only im- 
portant prose work of imagination, 
335 ; evidence in, of his aims and 
tastes, ib. 

Newdegate, Anne, evidence in Sir 
William Knollys's letters to, of his 
admiration for Mary Fitton, 237 

Newdegate family, the, documents of, 
bearing on the identification of the 
"Dark Lady," 146; the records of, 
and the morality of the Elizabethan 
maids of honour, 240 

New method. Bacon's, and his earlier 
aspirations, 270 

Nichol, 'Professor John, and Bacon's un- 
paralleled activity, 293 

Nicholson, Dr. Brinsley, and the " loose- 
legged Lais" of Marston's Saty7-es, 
216 

Nine dales wonder, dedication of 
Will Kemp's, 150 

Nomentack, the Indian, the person- 
ality of, 159 

Northumberland MS., the, almost the 
only piece of evidence connecting the 
names Shakespeare and Bacon, 5 ; 
Mr. Spedding and, 6 ; zodiacal devices 
in, 8 ; rough drafts in Bacon's hand- 
writing of speeches in the devices, 

39 
Notes and Queries, and Shakespeare's 
facial expression, 12 



382 



INDEX 



Novutn Organum, proof of Bacon's 
philosophic spirit in, 105 ; and his 
earlier aspirations, 270, 272; difficulty 
in believing that the author was also 
the writer of the Plays, &c., of 
Shakespeare, 279 ; revision of, 317 

Observations oh a Libel, Bacon's, use of 
a portion of the letter to Monsieur 
Critoy in, 320 

Official records, the treatment of, 38 

" Of Love," Bacon's Essay, analogy be- 
tween and the " syren tears " of Sonnet 
cxix., 228 

Othello, use of the word preposterous 
in, 54 ; date of its publication, 316 ; 
additions to, ib. ; Baconian allusions 
in, ib. 

Ovid's Banquet of Sense, Chapman's, 
allusions in the Sonnets to, 221 

Palgrave, Francis Turner, and the 
Sonnet-scandal, 62 

Palladis Palatium, William Wrednot's, 
and Bacon's commonplace books, 
294 

Palladis Tatnia, Francis Mere's, and 
Bacon's commonplace books, 294 

Pallas, connection of, with Bacon, 285 ; 
La Jessie's reference to, 286 ; reference 
to, in a paper found in the Lambeth 
collection, ib. ; first appearance of, 
289 

Pallas Shake-speare evidence, the Baco- 
nians and, 281 et seq. ; and Ben 
Jonson, 289 

Passionate Pilgrim, the, probable date 
of, 243 

Pembroke, Earl of. 5tfe Herbert. William 

Percy, Francis Bacon's man-servant, 
SO 

Perez, Antonio, friendship of, with Bacon, 
43 ; suspected of the murder of Es- 
covedo, 44 ; his intimacy with Lady 
Rich, 45 ; his baseness, 46 

Phxnix and the Turtle, The, 167 ; and 
" the alone Queen," 288 

Pickering, Lord Keeper, and Bacon's 
allusion to the " eclipse" of the Queen, 
225 

Pierce Penilesse, the nobleman ad- 
dressed in Nash's, 212 

Pigmalion s Image, Marston's, the 
character "Labeo" in, 12 et seq.; 
reference to Venus and Adonis, 12, 
19 ; the spelling of, 19 ; an imitation 
of Venus and Adonis, 23 ; date of the 
publication of, 208 ; similar line in 
and Sonnet XXXII., 209 

Platonism of the Sonnets, the, parallel 
cases to, 257 

Plays, money made by the publication 
of, 326 

Poejns of Shakespeare, Mr. Wyndham's 
edition of, 191 



Poems, the writings of, not a slur on a 
man's character in Elizabethan times, 
310 

Poetaster, Ben Jonson's, " Crispinus " 
in, 13 ; attacks on play-writers in, 54 ; 
references in, to topical jests, 62 ; his 
allusions in, 84 ; light which it throws 
on the authorship of the Shakespeare 
Plays, 85 ; Bacon depicted in, ib., 
310 ; threatened with a prosecution, 
ib. ; main points of, as aiming at 
Bacon, 86 ; Shakespeare depicted in, 

93 
Poetical Rhapsody, Francis Davidson's, 

I6S 

Poetomachia, the. See War of the 
Theatres 

Polwhele, Captain, his marriage with 
Mary Fitton, 164 

Polyhymnia, Peele's, the allusion in, to 
Essex, and the identity of Hews, 357 

Pope, Alexander, his false judgment on 
Bacon, 63, 259 

Posthumous Letters, William Hunting- 
don's, 248 [note) 

Preposterous, use of the word, 53, 54 

"Procreation Sonnets," the, 132; the 
Earl of Southampton in, 134 ; and 
Bacon, 136; the subject of, 191, 202 

Promus, Bacon's, mention of the " Gar- 
dens of Adonis" in, 70; allusion in, 
to Bacon's theory of the nature of 
fire, 244 ; a storehouse for subsequent 
literary edifices, 294 

Psalms, Bacon's, the standard of poetry 
in, 337 ; the dedication of, 339 



Raleigh, Sir Walter, one of the true 
founders of the United States, 161 

Randolph, Thomas, evidence borne by, 
to Bacon's poetic faculty, 274 

Rape of Lucrece. See Lucrece 

Rawley, William, and Bacon's power 
of paraphrasing, 73 ; and Bacon's 
character, 259 ; the reason why he 
did not divulge Bacon's authorship 
of Shakespeare, 266 ; and Bacon's 
facility for improving other people's 
language, 299 

Reactio, Marston's, 20 ; " Labeo " in, 21 

Recusants, the, search for, 96 ; char- 
acters of the Shakespeare Plays 
amongst, ib. 

Reed, Edwin, and Bacon's poetic faculty, 
269 

Remusat, C. de, and Bacon's "Con- 
fession of Faith," 260 

Renaissance literature, and young girls 
attiring themselves as pages, 264 

Returne from Parnassus, the, Burbage 
and Kemp in, 82 

Rich Lady, her intimacy with Antonio 
Perez, 45 ; identified by Gerald Mas- 
sey with the " Dark Lady," 255 



INDEX 



383 



Richard II. , allusion to, by Ben Jonson, 
85 ; performance of, 89 (note) ; allu- 
sion to, in The Silent Wo7nan, 155 ; 
and the rising of Essex, 166 ; its con- 
nection with the rising of Essex, and 
Bacon's silence about Shakespeare, 
180, 324 ; date of its publication, 
324 ; Queen Elizabeth's suspicion 
against, ib. 

Richard III., revision of, and additions 
to, 317 

" Rival Poets," the, allusions to, in the 
Sonnets, 209, 220, 359 

Romeo and Juliet, a clever parody on, 
91; signs of the "Dark Lady" 
episode in, 195 ; intimate connection 
of, with the Sonnets, 306, 313 

" Rose," the, Henslowe's theatre, 233 

"Rose," the term of endearment, pos- 
sible reason for the use of, in the 
Sonnets, 233 

Ruscus, the identity of, 321 

Russell, Mistress Aim, marriage of, 149, 
231 

Russells, the, and masques before the 
Queen, 43, 55 ; and the Earl of Essex, 

79 
Rutland, the Earl of, Lord Essex's 
letter to, 173 



Sanford, John, and the Earl of South- 
ampton's beauty, 139 
Sarrazin, Gregor, and the ' ' Dark Lady," 

195 

Satiromastix , Dekker's, light which it 
throws on the authorship of the 
Shakespeare Plays, 85 

Satyres, Marston's, light which they 
throw on the authorship of the Shake- 
speare Plays, 85 ; allusions to South- 
ampton in, 215; the "loose-legged 
Lais" in, ib. 

Saviolo, Vincento, book by, and As You 
Like It," 186 

"Scandal," the, in the Sonnets, 25, 32 
et seq. ; in contemporary Satires, 26 ; 
Bacon's connection with, 35 ; less 
repulsive than generally considered, 
40 ; what it really was, 40 et seq. ; 
compromising letters, 49 ; references 
to, in Sonnets cxx. , cxxi., 53 ; possi- 
bility of its connection with Mary 
Fitton, 55; W. C. Hazlitt on, 
60 

Schmidt, Alexander, and the "Gardens 
of Adonis" in Henry VI., 69 

Scourge of Folly, John Davies's, 27 

Scourge of Villanie, Marston's, suppres- 
sion of, 15 ; evidence in, of Bacon's 
authorship of Venus and Adonis, 22 ; 
Nash branded in, 25 ; thejpassage in, 
concerning " Luscus," 28; Shake- 
speare depicted in, 93 

Second Frutes, Florio's, 183 



Secret Drama of Shakespeare' s Sonnets, 
The, Gerald Massey's, 9 ; view ex- 
pressed in, on the author's scholar- 
ship, 67; and the "Procreation 
Sonnets," 134 

Sejanus, Ben Jonson's, the production 
of, 27 ; gags inserted in, 28 

Shadow of Night, Chapman's, allusions 
to, in the Sonnets, 220 

Shakespeare and His Times, Drake's, 
and the individual so affectionately 
addressed in the Sonnets, 131 

Shakespeare Anniversary of 1902, the, 

367 

Shakespeare, John, 96 

Shakespeare, William, the facial expres- 
sion of, 12 ; his over-editing of plays, 
27 ; his lack of classic art, 28 ; his 
true position, 29 ; his breaches of the 
moral law, 34; absence of biographical 
hints that he was a universal scholar, 
72 ; his vocabulary, ib. ; his lack of 
qualifications for the authorship of the 
Shakespeare Plays and Poems, 76 ; 
his inability to have written Venus a?id 
Adonis, 77; Ben Jonson's early atti- 
tude towards, 81 ; his familiarity with 
Ovid, 02 ; his love of the stage, 93 ; 
a busy actor-manager, 94 ; his hand 
in the Shakespeare Plays, 95 ; his 
religion, 97; and the ghost in Kyd's 
Ur-Hamlet, 123 ; Robert Greene's 
jealousy of, 124 ; improbability of his 
being closely intimate with the court, 
148 ; his signature to The Phcenix 
and Turtle, -Lb-j ; want of evidence 
that he knew Essex, 168 ; and Italian 
dialogues and aphorisms, 185 ; 
Thorpe's estimate of, 193 ; his oppor- 
tunities for visiting Italy, 200 ; and 
Bruno's philosophy, 218; the "lame- 
ness " of, 223 ; allusions in the Sonnets 
to his profession as an actor, 228 ; 
courtly favour in which his theatrical 
company was held, 234 ; possible 
reasons why he is never mentioned by 
Bacon, 234; silence of other con- 
temporaries as to him, 235; lack of 
evidence implicating him with the 
scandal about Mary Fitton, 238 ; re- 
sentment of his dethroning pure idol- 
worship, 260 ; and Montemayor's 
Diana, 265 ; the hyphen in his name, 
283, 286, 288 ; his lack of facilities for 
producing the plays, &c. , 296 ; absence 
of laudatory laments at his death, 
309 ; his memorial tomb in Stratford 
Church, 310 ; the conspiracy of silence 
about him, ib. ; and the authorship 
of Hamlet or King Lear, 319 ; the 
date of his first acknowledged play, 
325 ; the supposition that he allowed 
his name to be used for the plays, 326 ; 
the signature of his name to the dedi- 
cation of Venus and Adonis, 340 ; the 



384 



INDEX 



Shakespeare, William — continued 
first appearance of his name on the 
printed plays, 343 ; his professional 
and business capabilities, 346 ; the ac- 
knowledged writer of the most popular 
love-poems of the time, ib. ; why his 
name as the author of the plays was 
not given out at once, 347 ; the theory 
that he wrote Bacon's works, 365 ; 
reason why he left no MSS. or men- 
tioned any in his will, 367 

Shakespeare-Bacon, essay on, and 
Bacon's view of poetry, 340 

Shakespeare Monument, the, 102 ; Latin 
inscription on, 103 ; the composer of 
the inscription, 105 

Shakespeare Plays, the, Welsh characters 
in, 50 ; historical rather than autobio- 
graphical, 57 ; Italian scholarship of 
the author of, 72 ; French scholarship 
shown in, 73 ; proof of authorship 
of, inferred from contemporary assent, 
94 ; the love scenes in, 123 ; the dates 
of, 140 ; continual alteration of the 
early, 196, 314 ; parallelisms and 
identities between the Plays and the 
acknowledged works of Bacon, 251 ; 
strange love ideals in the earlier plays, 
255 ; frequent dwelling upon certain 
changes of sexual appearance in young 
lads and girls, ib. , 263; loftiness of 
the infused religious element in, 261 ; 
and the argument that Bacon had no 
time to write them, 293 ; unique 
words in, 301 ; not dedicated to any 
person or patron, 307 ; the coarseness 
of the dialogue in, 311 ; news of the 
extreme Baconians on, ib, ; scenes 
and incidents attributable to Shake- 
speare, 312 ; origin of the constant 
revision of, 317; the opinion that all 
the plays were pirated, 326 ; supposed 
self-revelation in, of the author, 327 ; 
the superiority of their moral tone 
over that of ordinary plays of the 
period, 329 ; reason for the opposition 
to the Bacon hypothesis of, 341 ; sup- 
posed dates of, 346 

Shakespeare Plays and Poems, scholar- 
ship of the author of, 66 ; views of 
the Shakespearians on author's schol- 
arship, ib. , 67 ; Sir Theodore Martin 
and the view of Shakespeare's con- 
temporaries on the authorship of, 116 ; 
view of Professor A. R. Wallace on 
the authorship of, 118; view of Sir 
Henry Irving on, 124 ; signs in, of de- 
pression caused to Bacon by his breach 
with Southampton, 178 ; date of 
publication of Poems, 194 ; unusual 
circumstances connected with, 307 et 
seq. ; the poems dedicated to South- 
ampton, ib. 

Shakespeare's MSS., the absence of re- 
vision in, 315 



Shakespeare's Purge, 83 

Shakespeare' s Sonnets, Samuel Butler's, 

33 

Shakespeare' s Sonnets, Samuel Smith 
Travers's, 364 

Shakesper nut Shakespeare, W. H. Ed- 
wards's, 281 ; R. L. Ashurst's remarks 
on, 282 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, and Bacon's 
poetic faculty, 272 

Sidney, Sir Philip, his influence over the 
author of Venus and Adonis and 
the Sonnets, 143, 201 ; and Giordano 
Bruno, 219 

"Silent Name," the, in Marston's 
Scourge of Villanie, 23 

Silent Woman, Ben Jonson's, Bacon 
portrayed in, 84, 152 ; Herbert por- 
trayed in, 152; date of, 154; allusion 
to Richard II., 155 ; allusion in, to a 
work on Tacitus, 155 

Siiex Scintilians, the preface to, 338 

Some Elizabethan Cipher Books, 7 

Sonnet, by William Herbert, Earl of 
Pembroke, the "blushing rose" in, 

156, 157 
Sonnets, the, autobiographical character 
of, I, 55, 190; the real keys to the 
Bacon-Shakespearian question, i ; and 
Plays, the work of the same author, i ; 
labour devoted to the elucidation of, 
9; the "scandal" of, 25; external 
evidence of, 32-52 ; internal evidence 
of, 53-65 ; which deal with the 
"bewailed guilt" of the author, 55; 
aristocratic and refined atmosphere 
of, 56, 191 ; original source of the 
last two, 70; the great majority 
addressed to a high-born young man, 
130 ; references to the " Dark Lady " 
in, 131 ; the William Herbert theory 
of, 132 ; date of the earliest, 133 ; the 
Adonis of, 137; the "Wills" in, 146, 
236 ; intimacy of Shakespeare and 
Pembroke revealed in, 147 ; resem- 
blance between their wording and 
that of Lord Pembroke's letter to 
Cecil, 171 ; the mystery of, known to 
Essex and Southampton and Ben 
Jonson, 177 ; signs in, of the de- 
pression caused to Bacon by his 
breach with Southampton, 178 ; sub- 
ject of the earlier, 191, 202; the 
dedication of, 192 ; the printer of, ib. ; 
not intended for the public eye, 194 ; 
enigmas in, 195; date of the first 
seventeen, 201 ; and 'SixAn^y % Arcadia, 
ib. ; traces of similarity in, with Astro- 
phel and Stella, 202 ; date of, 202 ; 
allusions in, and parallels to, Venus 
and Adonis and Lucrece, ib. ; a 
likely date for, 204 ; melancholy feel- 
ing in the author of the earlier, 205 ; 
platonic relationship between Bacon 
and Southampton revealed in, 211 ; 



INDEX 



38s 



Sonnets, the — continued 

clue to the reason why the mystery 
of, was never revealed, 211 ; chrono- 
logical order of, 214 ; traces of Bruno's 
philosophy in, 218, 226, 229 ; allu- 
sions to Chapman, Daniel, and Mar- 
ston in, 209, 220 ; allusions in, to 
Queen Elizabeth, 225, 226 ; and Ger- 
man critics, 242, 243 ; hidden allu- 
sions (in the second series), to the 
author's "infection of nature," 244; 
admission in, by the author, of his 
li» folly in being attracted to a wanton, 
246 ; the practice of writing for others, 
249 ; the probability that some were 
written by Bacon for some one else, 
ib. , 250 ; the possibility that some of 
those which seem to connect their 
author with the "Dark Lady" or 
Mary Fitton were written by Bacon for 
Pembroke, 253 ; the two loves of the 
author, 254 ; nature of the love of 
the author for the " Dark Lady," ib. ; 
depreciatory remarks about the love 
of women in, 255 ; the ideal of, ib. ; 
reason why they were called "sugred," 
276 (noU); self-assertion in, of the 
author, 295, 296; numerous parallels 
between them and the early plays, 
306, 313; parallel to the Baconian 
authorship of, 344 ; some eccentric 
critics of, 362 ; quoted in the House 
of Commons, 367 
Sonnets, the, autobiographical, abrupt 
close of, 248 ; nature of the last two, 
248 ; scholarship of, ib. 
Sonnets, the last two, scholarship 

shown in, 70 ; source of, ib. 
Sonnets xviii.-xxvi., date of, 203 
Sonnet xx., the love referred to in, 
probably Platonical, 256 ; the " Mr." 
Hews of, 356 
Sonnet xxvi. , reveals the name of the 
hidden author, 2 ; remarkable resem- 
blance of, to the dedication of Lucrece, 
ib., 206 ; the date of, 207 
Sonnets xxvii.-xxviii., allusion to the 
author's journey to the North, 217 ; 
their striking parallelism to Lucrece 
and Romeo and Juliet^ 205 ; subject of, 
207 
Sonnets xxix.-xxxvii., reference in, 

to a period of disgrace, 208 
Sonnet xxxii. , reference to Marston 

in, 20g 
Sonnet xxxvi. , supplies the answer to 
the reason why we do not hear of any 
personal relationship between Bacon 
and Southampton, 211 
Sonnets xxxviii.-xxxix. , period of, 

213 
Sonnets xl.-xlii., importance of, with 
regard to the relations between the 
author and the friend who robbed the 
poet of his mistress, 214 



Sonnets xlviii.-li. , allusion in, to a 

journey taken by the author, 217 
Sonnets lii.-lv. , and Southampton, 217 

Sonnets LVii. and LViii.,and Pembroke's 
letter to Cecil, 217 

Sonnets lix.-lxxiv. , pessimistic philo- 
sophy of, 217 ; hint of assassination 
in, 217 ; ideas and phrases in, pointing 
to Bacon, 218 

Sonnets LXXv.-lxxxvi., the "rival 
poets " referred to in, 209 ; prospect 
of death referred to in, 210 

Sonnets lxxv.-lxxxvii., excuses in, 
for the author's verse being ' ' barren 
of new pride and tongue-tied," and 
allusion in, to rival poets, 219 ; legal 
allusions in, 222 

Sonnet Lxxviii., reference in, to Willie 
Hughes leaving Shakespeare's com- 
pany, 358 

Sonnet Lxxxii., the first line of, 222 

Sonnet Lxxxvi., and the "rival poet," 

359 
Sonnets Lxxxviii.-cv. , references in, 

to Southampton's life at court, 223 ; 

to the " lameness " of the author, ib. ; 

chronological allusion in, 225 
Sonnet LXXXIX. , and the reason why 

Southampton was ignored by Bacon, 

211 
Sonnet cvii. , date of, 225 ; allusion in, to 

the eclipse of " the mortal moon," ib. 
Sonnets Cix.-CXXV. , self-accusation 

in, by the author, 53 ; use of the word 

'preposterous lie''' in, ib. ; date of, 226; 

allusion in, to a threefold charge 

hanging over the author's head. 227 ; 

apparent allusion in, to Mary Fitton, 

228 ; allusions in, to Shakespeare's 

profession as an actor, ib. 
Sonnet cxxiv., Baconian character of, 

230 ; the author of, a man of quality, 

ib. 
Sonnet cxxv., the expression informer 

in, 56, 232 ; and the marriage of 

Mistress Anne Russell, 149 ; suggested 

dates of, 231 
Sonnet cxxvi., forms a break in the 

Sonnets, 233 ; part played in, by a 

certain Will, ib. ; absence of an envoy 

from, 354 
Sonnets cxxvii.-CLii., allusions in, to 

the " Dark Lady," 235 ; play on the 

word Will in, 236 
Sonnet cxxxvi., enigma of the closing 

distich of, 238 
Sonnet cxxxviii., and the moral 

character of the " Dark Lady," 239 ; 

the printer of, 291 ; probable Baco- 
nian authorship of, ib. 
Sonnet cXLiii., similarity betweensimile 

in, and one in Bacon's letter to Fulke 

Greville in 1595, 241 ; one of the Will 

Herbert series, 242 ; alleged allusion 

in, to the Earl of Southampton, ib. 

2 B 



386 



INDEX 



Sonnet cxLiv., the "Two Loves" of, 
191 ; hints in, 243 ; hmit of date in, for 
the Passionate Pilgrim, ib. ; allusion 
in, to Bacon's theory of the nature of 
fire, ib. ; identity of "the man right 
fair " of, 247 

Sonnets CXLV.-CLii., the questionings 
and meditations of the author in, 247 

Sonnet CLi., moral unworthiness of, 244 ; 
allusion in, to misconduct of the author 
with a lady of rank, 246 ; the difficulty 
of believing Bacon to be the author, 
250 ; diversity of its spirit from that 
of Sonnet CXLI. , ib. 

Sonnet CLii ., self-accusation of the author 
in, 248 

Southampton, Earl of, his friendship 
with Bacon, 43, 123, 129; his first 
appearance at Gray's Inn, 120; his 
friendship with Shakespeare, 129 ; ad- 
dressed in the Sonnets, 134 : his pro- 
posed marriage, 135, 202 ; beauty of, 
139 ; alienation of, from Bacon, 142 ; 
improbability of his being intimate 
with Shakespeare, 143 ; allusions to, 
by Ben Jonson, 155 ; one of the true 
founders of the United States, 160; 
mystery of the Sonnets known to, 177 ; 
his breach with Bacon, 178 ; imprison- 
ment of, 178 ; release of, ib. ; Bacon's 
letter to, ib. ; and the earlier Sonnets. 
191 ; Sonnets sent to, 203 ; personal 
relationship with Bacon, aio ; ana- 
grams of his name, 212 ; and the 
robbery of the mistress of the author 
of the Sonnets, 214 ; the youth 
of, 215 ; allusions to, in Marston's 
Satyres, ib. ; references in the Sonnets 
to his life at court, 223 ; allusions in 
the Sonnets to his imprisonment, 226 ; 
his influence in advancing or favour- 
ing theatrical companies, 234 ; alleged 
allusion to, in Sonnet CXLIII., 242; 
the colour of his hair, 247 ; contem- 
porary evidence that he liad literary 
work composed for him by others, 
249 ; the poems dedicated to him, 307 

Southampton theory of the Sonnets, the, 
opponents of, 138 

Southwell, Elizabeth, and the Earl of 
Essex, 79 

Southwell, Robert, printing of a poem 
by, 192 

Spedding, Mr., and Bacon's style, 46; 
and Lady Anne Bacon's letters, 51 ; 
and Bacon's "Confession of Faith," 
260 ; and the absence of poetic fire in 
Bacon's writings, 267 

Stage, the, in Queen Elizabeth's time, 
as a means of publishing opinions, 
327 
Standen, Mr., letter from, to Francis 
Bacon, 45 ; his letters to Anthony 
Bacon written under different names, 
320 



Stationers' company, members of, and the 

purchase of MSS. in Queen Elizabeth's 

time, 326 
Stopes, Mrs. C. C, and the "Dark 

Lady," 197; and W. H., ib. ; and 

Bacon's mistress, 266 
Strange's players. Lord, and Henslowe's 

theatre, 233 
Stratford tomb, the, the head of Shake- 
speare on, 102 
Supposes, The, and the Taming of the 

Shrew, 345 
" Swan of Avon," the, a possible allusion 

to Bacon, 106; suggested solution of 

the expression, 369 
Swinburne, Algernon Charles, and the 

"lameness" of Shakespeare, 223 
Sydney, Sir Robert, letter to, from 

Rowland White, 148 
Sylva Sylvarum, Bacon's, 21 



Tacitus and Bacon, 155 

Taming of the Shrew, the, source of 
the under plot of, 345 

Tarlton, the Clown, the improbability 
of Shakespeare meeting, 56, 319 

Teares of the Isle of Wight, b'c. , The, 
anagrams in, 212 

Tempest, The, the writing of, 317 ; ex- 
pression of the author's resolve to 
abjure poetry, 340 ; the anagram in, 

353 
Theatres in Elizabethan days, 91 ; the 

resort of profligate people, 328 
Thorpe, Thos. , and the dedication of 

the Sonnets, 192 ; other dedications 

by, 193; his estimate of Shakespeare, 

193 

Toothless Satires, Hall's, publication of, 
14; suppression of, 15 

"Trask" Lecture, the, by Sir Henry 
Irving, 124 

Travers, Samuel Smith, and Shake- 
speare's Sonnets, 364 

Troilus and Cressida, use of the word 
preposterous in, 54; Shakespeare's 
Purge, 83 ; light which it throws on 
the authorship of the Shakespeare 
Plays, 85 ; the preface to, 193 

"Tubrio," Marston's, and Kit Mar- 
lowe, 216 

T7V0 Gentlemen of Verona, The, signs of 
the "Dark Lady" episode in, 195; 
the Proteus in, 215; Thurio and the 
writing of sonnets for others, 249 ; 
strange love ideals in, 255; its con- 
nection with Montemayor's Diana, 
264 ; aristocratic atmosphere of, ib. ; 
intimately connected with the Sonnets, 
306, 313 ; date of the publication of, 
346 

Tyler, Thomas, his work on the 
Sonnets, 9 ; and the individual ad- 
dressed in the Sonnets, 132 ; his 



INDEX 



387 



Tyler, Thoma.s~ continugci 

researches into the history of Mrs. 
Fitton, 163 ; his exposition of the 
Sonnets and the Pembroke theory, 
191 ; and the W. H. of the dedica- 
tion, 192 ; and allusions to Chapman 
in the Sonnets, 220 ; and the reference 
to Plato in Hamlet, 362 

Tyrrell, Prof. R.Y. , his triangular duel 
with Dowden and Judge Webb, 109 ; 
and the authorship of the Plays, &c. , 
of Shakespeare, 279 

United States, the, true founders of, 

160 
Ur- Hamlet, the production of Kyd, 262 

Valerius Terminus, the earliest type of 
Bacon's Instauratio, 302 

Vanini, the Italian, in London, and 
Bacon, 229 

Vaughan, Henry, the Silex Scintillans 
of, 338 

Vautrollier, Jacquinetta, suggested as 
Bacon's mistress, by Mrs. Stopes, 266 

Venus and Adonis, the authorship of, 
14, 20 ; the Latin distich prefixed to, 
18 ; the author of, under a Latin veil, 
21 ; reason for concealment of the 
authorship of, 49 ; Shakespeare's in- 
ability to have written, 77 ; absence 
of dialect in, ib. ; dedication of, 143, 
145 ; the last stanzas of, 145 ; and 
Chapman's Ovid's Banquet of Sense, 
221 ; date of the publication of, 256 ; 
first appearance in, of William Shake- 
speare, 289 ; the licensing of, 300 ; 
the author of, also the author of the 
Shakespeare Sonnets and earlier Plays, 
306 ; the author of Hamlet visible in, 
310 ; the Bacon of the Sonnets visible 
in, ib. ; Shakespeare had no share in 
writing, 312 ; enrollment of, on the 
register at Stationers' Hall, 321 ; the 
signature of Shakespeare's name in 
the dedication and the question of 
the authorship, 340 

VirgidemicB, Hall's, 15 ; lines from, 
quoted by Dr. Grosart, 16 



Wallace, Alfred Russell, and the 
authorship of the Shakespeare Plays 
and Poems, 118 ; and the proof of 
the authorship, 281 



Walsingham, Sir Francis, and the letter 
to Monsieur Critoy, 320 

War of the Theatres, the, 81 ; duration 
of, 82 ; authors involved in, ib. 

" Waters of Parnassus," the. Bacon's 
allusion to, in his letter to Essex, 
^77> 273 ; in writing to Lord Henry 
Howard, 273 

" Waverley Novels," the, lesson to be 
learnt from, 113 

Webb, Judge, and the " noted weed," 
23, 107 ; his work The Mystery of 
William Shakespeare, 107 ; his tri- 
angular duel with Professor Tyrrell 
and Dowden, 109 

What You Will, Marston's, 24 

W. H., Sidney Lee and, 151 ; a clue to 
the words "sole begetter," 164; Mr. 
Tyler and, 192 ; and Mrs. C. C. 
Stopes, 197 ; and the Hews of Son- 
net XX. 

White, Richard Grant, and the "gardens 
of Adonis" in Henry VL, 69 

White, Rowland, his descriptions of 
masques and devices, 38 ; and William 
Herbert's first appearance in London, 
133 ; his letter to Sir Robert Sydney, 
148 

Whitgift, Archbishop, and the burning 
of Marston's and Hall's works, 15 ; 
and the licensing of Venus and Adonis, 
300, 312 ; and the refusal to license 
Hall's Satires and Marlowe's Ovid, 
ib. ; his friendship for Francis Bacon, 

313 

Willobie, interest taken by him in Lucrece 
and its author, 291 

" Wills," the three, in the Sonnets, 146, 
236 ; Mr. Sidney Lee on, in the Fort- 
nightly Review, 239 

Wilson, Thomas, his English MS. ver- 
sion of Montemayor's Diana, 265 

Wisdom of the Ancients, Bacon's, altera- 
tions in, 315 

Wither, George, and Bacon's poetic 
faculty, 274 

"Woman Coloured 111," the, meaning 
of the words, 246 

Worlde of Wordes, A, John Florio's 
dedication to, 183 ; the copy of, be- 
longing to Dr. Farmer, 184 



YoNGE, Barth, his English MS. version 

of Montemayor's Diana, 265 
Yorick's skull, the incident of, 59, 318 



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